


Worst Case Scenario

by MittenWraith



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Crack Treated Seriously, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff and Humor, Human Castiel (Supernatural), M/M, Post-Canon, Sam's Orange Jacket, Sharing Clothes, Sharing a Bed, The Winchester Gospels (Supernatural), wherein team free will becomes the case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-30 08:33:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18312008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MittenWraith/pseuds/MittenWraith
Summary: Their lives have always masqueraded as works of fiction, but for anyone they've ever interacted with, there's a scarily high chance that someday they'll discover the strangest events of their lives have been immortalized in a moderately obscure series of pulp horror novels. For Sam, Dean, and Cas, this is old news. For the people who've learned the truth, it's often a life-changing experience. Here's the story of a handful of those lucky... yeah, let's call them lucky... people whose lives intersected once upon a time with the Winchesters.And the stories they get to tell the Winchesters.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic started as a very late night rambling thought I posted on tumblr [here](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179545166750/what-percentage-of-the-people-in-the-supernatural). Within five minutes of posting it, I'd plotted this entire fic... Between the tumblr nippocalypse, the Pinefest, and half a dozen personal real life distractions, it only took about five months to finish it. I hope it was worth it. :D

It had been a long time coming. It had been nearly five years since Marie’s high school production of Supernatural: The Musical had opened more doors for her than she could’ve ever imagined. That night, she’d met the mysterious author of her favorite series of novels and learned there was more than a kernel of  truth in the pages of those tall tales.

What she hadn’t expected was a confused call from the admissions department at her first choice college about a week later to let her know her tuition had been paid in full for the next four years, as long as she stuck to her creative writing major. She’d always assumed her secretive benefactor had been Carver Edlund himself, but the man seemed to have dropped off the map entirely when she tried to contact his publisher again to ask. It was a mystery that she’d been determined to solve.

The more she researched Carver Edlund and his work, the more strange side roads Marie found herself meandering down. At first she focused her search on the internet, scouring fan sites and blogs and fanfic archives hoping to run across anyone who might know how to contact him, or even what became of him. She’d been so unsettled by the two Agents Smith who’d attempted to convince her that they were actually the Sam and Dean in the novels that she’d resisted the urge to try and contact them directly. But the more she searched, the more she became convinced that they were exactly who they’d said they were. The more she’d learned, the more grateful she was that she hadn’t just called them up in those early days and bombarded them with random questions.

Marie had arrived in St. Louis two weeks before the first day of her freshman year. Not only did she want a chance to settle in and learn the lay of the land in this new city, she’d arranged to meet up with two women she’d met online. They’d both had uncanny experiences, eerily similar to her own, but who’d only discovered the Supernatural books after their lives had been forever altered by their encounters with the bizarre.

Dana Wallace was the single mother of a young boy. Her husband had died mysteriously and terribly more than a decade earlier. She’d moved to St. Louis to be closer to her family, and to take a teaching job near the university. For several years she’d believed her husband’s death had been a horrific accident, until one of her colleagues turned her on to the Supernatural books. She’d devoured the series as a bit of escapist fiction over one summer break, and the entire world titled on its axis when she’d started the novel titled _It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam_. Suddenly everything she’d ever believed or understood about the world was upended. _She_ was in that book. Her husband’s strange death was apparently, according to Carver Edlund, the result of witchcraft. And the two strange, pushy FBI agents who’d scoured her kitchen for clues while asking her some wild questions had actually been hunting witches, one of whom turned out to be the girl she’d trusted to babysit her son. The girl had actually been an ancient witch trying to raise a demon, while Sam and Dean had been trying to stop the apocalypse.

It was all too much to believe, at first. She reread the book from cover to cover, struggling to remember every detail of that tragic week, and reeling in horror at the realization that her entire town had come that close to annihilation at the hands of angels and demons. At first she thought one of those FBI agents must’ve written the books under a pen name, and tried to dismiss it as a coincidence. After all, don’t writers do that? Take real events and put a fictional spin on them? But it was all too uncanny. Every detail of their interaction, down to the last word and gesture, was all there on the page. And the novel gave a startling and all too plausible explanation for the horrific series of tragedies that had struck her old home town that Halloween. It had prompted her to look a little closer at the events depicted in the rest of the books, too. Her research proved to be incredibly eye opening.

Dana had lived with that knowledge in secret for a while. What could she possibly tell her friends? Who could she even _ask_ about such a thing? She couldn’t tell anyone that the mass desecration of the local cemetery crypt had actually been the demon Samhain raising an army of zombies. They’d surely have her committed before believing a story like that.

Several years of research and a few confounding conversations with people she met online led her to the truth. It was all real. Not just the descriptions of events surrounding her husband’s murder by witchcraft-- because that’s what it had been-- but _all_ of it. The entire series of books contained the recorded history of Sam and Dean, monster hunters and the saviors of the whole entire world.

It had been Dana’s chance meeting with a woman named Lindsey in a chat room on a Supernatural fan site that helped her come to terms with what had happened, and begin to uncover the truth about the reality they lived in.

“I wouldn’t exactly say I was a _fan_ of the books,” Lindsey had tentatively said the first time they’d chatted. “More like I _identify_ with them in a weirdly personal way.”

It had been the same wary introduction that Dana had eventually extended to Marie when they met in the same chat room a few years later. It was almost like a secret handshake for the initiated, or in this case the secret knock that opened the door to the fandom beyond the fandom.

Lindsey had been a bartender who’d unwittingly spent a few weeks hanging out with Sam Winchester when he ran away from the apocalypse. Sam had been brooding and mysterious when they’d met, but she’d thought of him as a puzzle to solve while the man she’d initially known as Keith had worked behind her bar. When his not so friendly friends had shown up yelling about demons and the apocalypse, pouring what they claimed was demon blood down his throat and demanding he help them get revenge for their friend’s death, Sam had saved her and then disappeared from her life entirely. Suddenly she had an entirely new set of questions, and a far bigger mystery to solve.

It had led her to the same strange corner of the fandom for this obscure series of books. None of the folks who inhabited those hidden pages were fans, per se. No, they were all unwittingly part of the story, and trying to come to terms with what that meant.

Over the years, they’d welcomed dozens of members to their ranks. Bit players and side characters in the grand story of the Winchesters. In fact, they’d only collectively learned that was Sam and Dean’s last name when Charlie Bradbury had tripped into their little corner of fandom almost by accident six or seven years back. They never would’ve believed her, but Charlie had some wild post-canon stories to tell, and she had all the proof to back them up. Newspaper reports, secret files downloaded from Dick Roman’s personal computer, and a huge collection of photos. It was her photos that had shocked Marie into finally accepting that the Sam and Dean she’d met during her musical were really, truly the same men from the books, and that everything in them, down to the last detail, had really, truly happened.

It was an unsettling realization, on pretty much every level. Not only was the supernatural real, but it had touched all their lives in incomprehensible ways. It was the sort of shared experience that could really bond a group of people together.

Some of the people she’d met had gone on to become hunters themselves, like Michelle Tilghman who’d saved Dean’s life and watched her husband turn into a monster. If she could spare anyone else having to suffer through what she’d lost that day, Michelle considered it a job well done. Others still had devoted their spare time to keeping tabs on the Winchesters, and on the supernatural community in general. Such as Jamie, a bartender from Pennsylvania who had a remarkable encounter with a shapeshifter with a movie monster obsession, and Tina, a teenage girl who’d been in her 30’s before she ran into the Winchesters and a witch. Jamie left her old life behind and opened a sort of halfway house for people who’d had their entire lives uprooted by the supernatural-- both humans and unfortunate monsters who were doing their best to live their lives in peace. Tina had found Jamie shortly after beginning her own life over again. There were now all kinds of people in their ever-expanding support network.

But Marie was graduating from college now, and it seemed like the perfect excuse to host a little reunion, of sorts. A reunion for a handful of members of their community who’d never met in person, but also a reunion for all of them with the Winchesters. This time, there wouldn’t be a musical. There wouldn’t be a hunt of any kind. There’d only be some much needed rest, relaxation, and hopefully a bit of reciprocation. All she and her friends wanted was the chance to ask a few questions and hopefully get some unvarnished answers.

Jamie had given her the heads up that there wasn’t any new big drama brewing up in the supernatural world, no emergency planet-threatening situation they were tackling at the moment. Their new local contacts in Lebanon also informed them that the Winchesters had been regularly spotted around town over the last few weeks, so it seemed like the perfect time to arrange for them to take a few days off. And Marie, with her newly-minted degree in creative writing, was in the perfect position to lure the Winchesters in. It wasn’t that much different from crafting a good fanfic, after all. It was just the setup for what would hopefully be an excellent story, and maybe even a new chapter in the Winchester Gospel.

Regardless, it felt like a calling, and everyone in the group chat had agreed. They composed a list of objectives for the weekend, and set the wheels of their grand plan in motion.

***

Dean walked past Cas’s room for the third time in an hour, only to find him still intently focused on his laptop. They’d had nothing to do for days, and Dean was beginning to go a bit stir crazy. It wasn't like Cas had been avoiding him or anything, but he had essentially been Dean’s sole source of entertainment since they’d come home after their last hunt. At least he had been until three hours ago when he’d asked to borrow a laptop and then retreated to his room. It wasn’t like Dean couldn’t entertain himself for a while. He just didn’t see why he should have to.

“You finding what you’re looking for?” Dean asked, as casually as he could manage while standing awkwardly in the doorway. Cas hadn’t shut his door, at least, so Dean didn’t have to dither about whether to knock and disturb his privacy or not.

“Oh, uh, I… haven’t yet, I don’t think,” Cas replied, looking up nervously from the screen he’d been studying intently until he’d been interrupted.

“Well, do you need some help? I know a computer trick or two.”

Cas glanced at the screen one last time and sighed, scooting the chair over at his desk to make room for Dean at his side. “I hoped to find a case for us, but barring that I was at least hoping to find a reason for us to leave the bunker for a few days. You seemed restless, and I thought finding something for us to do might provide a nice change of pace.”

“Aw, Cas, you coulda told me that. I’d have been happy to help.”

Cas shrugged. “I was hoping it would be a nice surprise. And I didn’t expect it to take this long. Although I admittedly did become distracted from researching potential cases by the search for local tourist attractions. Did you know there’s very little to do in this part of the country?”

“Yeah, I think that’s why they built the bunker here in the first place. Isolation was a perk.”

“Yes, well,” Cas replied, rolling his eyes and turning back to the computer. “It doesn’t feel like a perk sometimes.”

“Wait a sec. Don’t tell me _you’re_ bored, too? Angel who sat on a cloud watching the world for millennia getting cabin fever after a few slow days at home? Is my sparkling wit and charm not enough to keep you entertained?”

He’d meant it to sound light and teasing, but the crack in his voice betrayed the fear that it might’ve been true. Dean missed the look of horror that flashed through Cas’s eyes because he was too busy staring intently at the computer screen as if the google search results Cas had been perusing might hold the secrets of the universe. At the very least, they’d held the secret to avoiding dealing with his feelings for a few more minutes.

Cas felt Dean’s thread of fear and immediately regretted having tried to surprise Dean with a fun activity they could both enjoy. Whether it had been a hunt or just something interesting they could occupy an afternoon with together, he still could’ve let Dean know that he hadn’t been trying to escape or avoid him for a while. He’d really only intended to be gone a few minutes, long enough to run a few quick searches and return victorious with a handful of suggestions for them to choose from. He hadn’t meant to hurt Dean. He never does, but somehow it still kept happening. Cas cleared his throat, swearing to himself to do better, and tried to refocus his attention on his original mission now that Dean was there to help.

“I assumed you might be up for a road trip, too. It’s been several weeks since you’ve had a chance to drive longer than the trip to Henderson for supplies.”

Dean tilted his head back and forth and scrunched his eyebrows together at that. He would never turn down an excuse for a nice long drive.

“Yeah, okay, that does sound pretty sweet. Roll down the windows and feel the warm breeze on my face, good tunes on the radio. We don’t even need a destination if you just wanna hit the road, Cas. We don’t need an excuse to go for a drive.”

Cas glanced up at Dean, still standing over his shoulder, still staring intently at the computer screen, and clicked the next article down on results page just to look like he was actually accomplishing something. He wasn’t even really focusing on the words on the screen, thinking more about how to make Dean feel better than finding an excuse to get them both out of the bunker. But while Cas was busy worrying about Dean, Dean had been reading.

“Well, lookie there. I think you might’ve found us a hunt.”

Cas glanced up at Dean just as he reached over his shoulder to tap the down arrow on the keyboard, and got a face full of flannel. He quickly looked back at the screen just in time to see the headline disappear off the top of the screen. “Has Nessie moved to Missouri? Resort town plagued by strange sightings in Lake of the Ozarks.” He scanned the article, but it read more like a sensationalist play for tourist dollars than an actual case.

“You can’t be serious, Dean. There haven’t been any reports of injuries or property damage.”

Dean shrugged and stood up. “Yeah, but the article was just posted today. There could be other incidents that haven’t been reported yet.”

Cas frowned and scrolled up to reread the article more carefully. “There’s no mention of witness names, or of police reports. There’s no concrete facts for us to go on, aside from the author’s statements. It’s possible they invented the entire story.”

“Honestly, Cas? I don’t even care. Look at this place,” he said, clicking over to the photo gallery attached to the article and scrolling through grainy images of hazy shapes floating in the murky water. It wasn’t the supposed monster that had caught his attention, though. “If you wanna get out of the bunker for a few days, this ain’t a half bad place to spend it.”

The two of them looked through pictures of the nearby resort on the shoreline in the background of several of the images. The building looked like a grand old mansion, the long and inviting back porch shaded by trees at the top of a broad expanse of lawn bordering the lake. Docks with several boats, canoes, and a small outbuilding with a row of paddles and assorted fishing gear stacked beside it stood at the water’s edge. On one of the pictures, Dean zoomed in on a sign at the end of the dock.

“Healing Waters Spa,” he read out, and then reached his other arm around Cas’s other shoulder, framing him from behind in an awkward hug as he typed the name into a new google search tab. “Looks like most of the sightings from the article have happened in this area. If we’re gonna go investigate, we should probably check this place out. Jack and mom are gonna be up in Montana for at least a few more days clearing out the rest of the ghouls in that graveyard, so we got nothing stopping us from at least driving down and poking around.”

“And Sam? Do you think he’d object to following up on such a flimsy lead?”

Dean snorted. “Are you kidding? I think he’s got a touch of cabin fever, too. He was up at six this morning hauling boxes out of one of the storerooms. Breathing all that dust ain’t healthy.”

“Considering the large number of dangerous artifacts in those rooms, I would assume it’s especially unhealthy to inhale that dust for extended periods, yes,” Cas agreed, a grin spreading across his face. “We could all use the fresh air.”

“That’s settled, then. Pack a bag, or whatever, and I’ll go break the news to Sam.”


	2. Chapter 2

When Dean caught up with Sam a few minutes later, mid-coughing fit after lifting the lid on a box labeled _Volcanic Ash From Krakatoa-1883_ , he was only too eager to pack the possibly cursed dust back away in its crate and head out on the road. It was after dark by the time they found a place to stay in a larger town a few miles from the lake. The spa they intended to investigate first thing the following morning was along a rather secluded branch of the lake. There was no way in hell they were gonna try to find the place in the dark. Plus it had been a long drive, and they all just wanted to find something to eat and crash out for a few hours. It wasn’t like their mystery lake monster couldn’t wait until morning.

Dean pulled into the first cheap motel they came across that was also within walking distance of a decent looking roadhouse. He parked the car and Sam got out to check them in, and Dean turned to see Cas eyeing up the bustling roadhouse with a funny little half smile on his face. It made Dean grin even wider.

“Yeah, nothin’ says we can’t mix business with pleasure. Taking a road trip was a great idea, Cas. It feels good to get out. And it’ll feel better once we get some burgers and a few beers, am I right?”

“If you insist, Dean.”

Dean slapped the seat and opened his door. “I insist.”

Cas grinned wider and got out to help Dean with their bags. Sam returned and handed Dean a key, picking up his backpack and giving Dean a stern look.

“I know why you picked this place, Dean, and if you and Cas are gonna go over there,” he said, pointing at the neon-lit roadhouse, “then I’m gonna have some peace and quiet over there.” He swung his arm around, pointing at the serenely lit motel pool at the other end of the parking lot. “I’m in room fourteen if you need anything. Otherwise I’ll see you in the lobby for breakfast at nine. Don’t show up hungover, and for the love of lake monsters everywhere, please don’t go skinny dipping in the pool, that’s all I ask.”

With that, Sam took off down the length of the motel without another word, or so much as a glance back at them. Dean frowned after him, and had opened his mouth to try and stop him, but Cas rested a hand on his arm and held him back.

“If Sam would prefer to enjoy a quiet night outdoors, that’s his prerogative.”

Dean studied Cas for a moment, and then sighed. “Yeah, yeah. He just doesn’t know how to have fun.”

Cas snorted and shook his head, but followed Dean to their room. Cas had expected Dean to stop and freshen up after their long drive. In the past when they’d been to places like this, Dean had at least made a show of trying to flirt with whoever seemed to show an interest. Lately, though, Cas had noticed that Dean had paid less and less attention to everyone else when they were out together, especially since he’d officially moved into the bunker full-time. This time, Dean just dropped off his bag on the bed closest to the door and then practically dragged Cas across the street.

Just as Cas suspected, Dean had no interest in mingling with the crowd. He clearly enjoyed the noise and the bustle of the bar, tapping his feet along to the music and occasionally getting excited about a song that came on the jukebox, but he’d found them a table in an out of the way corner. Dean spent the next two hours-- aside from ordering the burger he’d wanted and several rounds of drinks-- talking exclusively to Cas.

They’d finished eating and the waitress had brought one last round of beers along with their check. She’d tried to flirt her way into a bigger tip, Dean had insisted after she’d sighed and gone back to work, giving Dean one last look over her shoulder as she went. Cas laughed and shook his head.

“I believe she was just flirting, Dean.”

Dean looked up from calculating her tip, glancing around as if he could confirm Cas’s assessment if he could only lay eyes on her again. He gave up without really trying to spot her in the crowd, and left her an extra five for the trouble.

Cas laughed again, and Dean gave him a funny look as he sipped at his last beer.

“We could’ve stayed home and done this,” Cas said.

Dean swallowed, looking a bit confused. “What, we ain’t got a place like this at home. That was a damn good burger, and I didn’t even have to cook it myself, either.”

“I mean, the two of us spending the evening together. We didn’t have to drive four hundred miles for that.”

Dean considered that for a moment and then shrugged. “Yeah, but we drove four hundred miles anyway. So we got to hang out somewhere different, hear some good music, and have a couple of damn fine burgers. I’d say that was worth it.”

Cas gave him a skeptical look. “Even if it turns out the lake monster is a prank or a publicity stunt?”

“Hey, we might uncover some shady real estate developer.”

Cas rolled his eyes at Dean’s ongoing Scooby Doo obsession, but didn’t interrupt or scold him for it. He’d learned it was an exercise in futility.

“Or we might just have a couple nice days hanging around the lake. And if we don’t find squat, maybe we can rent a boat for the day and go fishing, or just chill at that spa place for an afternoon. We already had one decent night out, so I’m gonna go out on a limb and call it worth the trip anyway, okay?”

Cas nodded slowly. “Okay.”

Dean set his empty beer bottle on the table and leaned in closer while Cas finished his drink. He turned serious as he did, looking Cas right in the eye. “You don’t gotta worry, Cas. It ain’t your fault, no matter what happens. I know you were trying to get us out of the house for a few days, but I’m the one who insisted on this particular case. You wanted to have fun, so here we are having fun. I just don’t want you blaming yourself if the hunt’s a bust, okay?”

Cas just stared at him for a moment, taken aback by Dean’s intensity. Sure they were both a bit tipsy, but Dean looked absolutely sober as he waited for Cas’s response.

“I understand, Dean. We’re primarily here to have fun. I was just just surprised you spent the entire evening talking to me, when there’s several hundred people here who are potentially more interesting.”

Dean jolted back, affronted, and then leaned in even closer. “Cas, there ain’t anyone in this place more interesting than you are. Hell, there might not be anyone on the whole planet.” For just a second, Dean looked absolutely panicked at the certainty in his own voice at those words, but he swallowed hard and chose to press on. He could always blame the alcohol in the morning, if need be. “There isn’t anyone I’d rather spend time with, okay?”

Cas let that sink in, both the earnestness in his voice and the sincerity in his eyes, and then nodded slowly. Dean let out a relieved breath, the tension snapping between them. Cas decided to relieve the strange headiness he was left with in the wake of Dean’s confession by lightening the mood a bit. He finished off the last of his beer in one long draught and then stood up.

“Even Sam?”

Dean got up, too, scoffing. “That stick in the mud? He probably spent an hour mapping the whole lake and then went to sleep. Why, did you have some big plans I was holding you back from?” he asked, looking more than a little worried as he and Cas wove their way between the tables to the door.

Cas was quick to reassure him as they stepped out of the noisy bar into the pleasantly mild evening air. “Of course not, Dean. You know there’s no one I enjoy spending time with more than you.”

Dean paused at the edge of the sidewalk looking slightly lost, shaking his head ever so slightly. “Yeah, I probably shouldn’t complain about that, even if I don’t get it.”

Cas stopped Dean from stepping down off the curb with a hand on his elbow, and a group of women giggled as they dodged around them and into the bar. When the door shut, muffling the raucous music and chatter within, Cas made sure he had Dean’s full attention. He looked Dean right in the eye as he spoke.

“We both enjoy each other’s company, Dean. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

He stared at Dean until he nodded slowly in acceptance. Cas nodded too, blowing out a breath as if he’d been uncertain of Dean’s reception, and was relieved they were on the same page. He let go of Dean’s arm and the two of them crossed the street back to their motel as Dean pulled their room key out of his pocket.

He unlocked the door and shrugged out of his jacket, tossing it over a chair and heading for his duffel. Cas still stood by the door, watching Dean’s routine as he retrieved his toiletry kit and set it down on the small sink counter. Cas followed suit as Dean brushed his teeth and splashed water on his face. He set his small bag beside Dean’s, and brushed his teeth while Dean dried his face. They stood shoulder to shoulder, Dean watching him in the mirror as if this was some unique experience. Cas rinsed his mouth out and then took the towel from Dean’s hands and dried his own hands and face before hanging it back up and turning to look at Dean directly. Dean was the one who finally broke the awkward silence.

“Sorry, it just hits me sometimes, you know? That you have to do stupid human shit like brushing your teeth now.” Dean laughed and shook his head. “I remember you pawing through my stuff once, years ago, looking at my toothbrush like it was a mystery you were trying to solve. And now…” Dean trailed off, waving a hand at their bags side by side on the counter.

Cas squinted at him. “Is that a problem? Oral health is very important.”

“Nah, not a problem, Cas. I’m just glad you’re here, you know?”

Cas tilted his head, not quite seeing what that had to do with anything Dean had been talking about, but feeling a wave of relief at the confirmation of the fact. Despite having been welcomed into the bunker with open arms this time, Cas still sometimes felt the old unsettling concern that maybe he didn’t belong there, or that he’d overstayed his welcome. It happened less and less frequently, especially with all the time he spent with Dean now, but it still happened.

“For the record, so am I,” Cas replied. “But as much as I enjoy your company, I thought we might’ve used our time tonight to ask some of the locals about the lake monster.”

Dean blinked at him. “Huh, I guess we could’ve.” He frowned and slowly walked over to the foot of his bed and sat down next to his bag, staring at a spot on the rug. “Guess I really needed a night off, you know? Kinda pretend we were just normal people on a normal road trip for once.”

Cas smiled at that and walked over to rest a hand on Dean’s shoulder until he looked up at him. “I’m glad, Dean. That had been my intent, after all, until we found this case.” Cas squeezed his shoulder and then slowly and a little awkwardly let his hand fall away. He cleared his throat and took a shuffling step back from where he’d been standing almost between Dean’s knees. “I suppose we should turn in, if we’re going to get an early start tomorrow.”

Dean continued staring at him, suffering through an internal debate over whether he should say something more, or accept the out Cas had just offered him. Again. Cas was still standing there, now just out of reach, which seemed a cruel metaphor for how Dean felt about him most of the time. Eventually he deemed the uncertainty in Cas’s eyes enough of a reason to let it go for now. He glanced over at the clock, giving him an excuse to stop staring at Cas.

“It’s still kinda early. We could see if there’s anything on tv, if you want.”

Cas smiled and nodded. “Yes, that sounds fine.”

Dean stood up to turn on the tv, and Cas sidestepped to the other bed, sat down and began removing his boots. Dean tried not to let his irrational disappointment show on his face, and instead kept his back turned toward Cas while he removed his own boots. He didn’t even bother changing his clothes, just stripping out of his flannel before flopping down on his bed and scooping the tv remote off the nightstand between the two beds. He flipped through the channels, focusing intently on the screen while Cas changed out of his jeans into a soft pair of sweats Dean had given him a while back. Much as he would’ve appreciated it, Dean was convinced that he was in no state to handle the mental image of Cas stripping out of his pants.

Cas made an interested little humming noise as Dean flipped past a show about the history of abandoned places, There wasn’t really much else on, so Dean turned it back and set the remote down. He tried not to seem disappointed when Cas hesitated for a moment before lifting the covers and crawling into the other bed. It wasn’t like they cuddled up to watch tv back at home, and he couldn’t explain why that thought suddenly made him feel so damn sad. It didn’t really matter right then, because they did have a case to distract them, if only he could survive until morning with Cas on the other side of the two foot wide chasm between their beds, splitting his attention between him and some abandoned Cold War era mine shaft. It only made him feel that much sadder.

Meanwhile, at the roadhouse across the street, that giggling group of women that Dean and Cas hadn’t even taken note of out on the sidewalk sat at a table in the front window, casting knowing glances at the quiet little motel across the street and the big black car parked outside, gleefully conspiring about what the following morning would bring.


	3. Chapter 3

Like every morning, the sun rose again. And like far too many mornings, Dean laid in bed after tossing and turning more than sleeping. This morning’s tossing and turning was brought to him by seeing Cas every time he rolled over, sleeping soundly in the other bed in the dim light filtering in through the blinds. How many times had he accused Cas of being a creeper for staring at him exactly the same way? He’d tried squeezing his eyes shut, he’d even tried forcing himself to think of anything else-- from the messiest of ghoul hunts to the pretty waitress he was sure was flirting with him at the diner they’d stopped at for lunch-- but eventually he’d give up and roll over again.

He’d have blamed the uncomfortable motel mattress for not being the memory foam he’d grown accustomed to at home, but as far as motel beds went it was actually not that bad. It was pretty damn comfy, actually. That only made his entire situation worse.

When Cas finally heaved a sigh and snuffled down in his pillow, Dean knew his torment was finally at an end, at least. He debated whether to pretend he was still sleeping or not, but eventually resigned himself to the fact that yes, he had been staring at Cas half the damn night. Cas opened his eyes and blinked blearily up to see Dean looking right back at him, and he smiled.

“Hello, Dean. I hope you haven’t been awake too long waiting on me.”

“Nah, it’s still early. We got a couple hours before we’re supposed to meet with Sam yet. I was just gonna let you sleep until you were done. You looked relaxed, you know?”

“Yes, Dean,” Cas replied, scooting closer to the edge of the bed and stretching around a yawn. “That’s typically how sleeping works.”

Neither of them moved, lying in bed just watching one another. It occurred to Dean after a few minutes that this should be awkward, or at the very least a little weird. But it wasn’t, at all, so he gave a little mental shrug and let it go. Cas was still smiling at him, and he decided that any time Cas was that relaxed and content was a good time. He’d made himself a promise months ago that he wouldn’t intentionally do anything to spoil Cas’s happiness, and he’d been trying his best to make the most of each and every time he could bring a smile to his friend’s face.

Their comfortable staring contest came to an end eventually. Cas stretched, sat up, and then shuffled off toward the bathroom.

“Do you mind if I shower first?” he asked, turning on the bathroom light.

Dean sighed and sat up himself. “Go for it.”

Cas nodded, and then closed the door behind him. The water turned on a few seconds later, and Dean suddenly regretted not asking to hit the head first. He rolled his eyes at himself and slowly set about deciding on what to wear to the spa. He hadn’t discussed it with Sam or Cas, and they hadn’t really made a formal plan of attack. He’d brought a suit, but he was pretty sure they didn’t have any reason to play FBI on this one. Unless they were going full-on Mulder and Scully, the FBI wouldn’t be interested in a couple of grainy photos of a supposed lake monster on some random small town blog.

Dean grinned to himself as he set his suit aside and pulled a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt out of his bag. It had been one of the flimsiest leads for a case that they’d ever bothered following up on. Usually when they had a thin lead like this, it was either accompanied by at least an educated guess about what might be behind the strange occurrence, or else some instinctual twinge that there might be _s_ _ omething _ to investigate. He shook his head, grinning wider. They all must’ve been really fucking desperate for any excuse to get outta the bunker for a few days if they were really taking this case seriously.

He laid out a flannel shirt just as the water shut off. Standard hunter attire was flexible enough to cover pretty much anything short of official Law Enforcement Formal. If Sam wanted to complain about his fashion sense, he could make a case for changing after they figured out what the hell they were even doing working a case based on a single vague report of a potential lake monster sighting. In all his years hunting, he'd learned it was almost never really a lake monster.

Cas stepped out of the bathroom a couple minutes later, his hair damp and toussled, clutching the sweats he’d worn to bed to his chest with one hand and struggling to hold a towel around his waist with the other. Dean froze in place for a moment, nearly dropping the stack of his own clothes he’d been ready to carry to the bathroom. He pulled himself together and tried to make it look like he’d been deliberately juggling his pants, offering Cas a pained half smile and awkwardly pointing at the bathroom door.

“You done in there?” Dean asked, clearing his throat after his voice nearly cracked and hoping Cas would think it was just sleep-rough.

Cas nodded, sidestepping over to where he’d left his duffel on the floor at the foot of his bed. He stared down at it, realizing he didn’t have a free hand to pick it up, and then dropped his jammies on the bed to retrieve it. Dean just stood there, unable to tear his eyes from Cas and petrified to walk the gauntlet behind Cas and his comically inadequate towel to the bathroom.

“I seem to have forgotten a change of clothes,” Cas muttered, attempting to unzip the bag with one hand while clutching his precariously draped towel to his hip.

Dean watched a drop of water roll down Cas’s neck, across the broad muscles of his shoulder and back, almost all the way down to the edge of that towel while Cas struggled with his bag. He couldn’t watch it go any further without having to admit he was just blatantly staring at Cas’s ass through the thin motel towel, so he tore his eyes away, held his breath and booked it to the bathroom to put an end to his own misery.

There was no respite to be found in the shower, where he was haunted by the tiny bar of soap Cas had used and abandoned in a nest of bubbles in the soap dish. Dean stared it down while waiting for the water to warm up, but quickly realized this was all a terrible idea. He couldn’t stop his mind from wandering back to Cas. He sighed, resigned, and cranked the water as cold as it would go, and then let his imagination run wild as he washed up as fast as humanly possible under the almost painfully cold spray. He spent an extra few minutes getting dressed slowly, spending an almost ridiculous amount of time staring at himself in the mirror wondering what the fuck he was supposed to do with any of this.

It was still too early to meet up with Sam when he came out of the bathroom, but he couldn’t realistically spend any longer in there. He hoped that Cas had enough time to get himself dressed and opened the door to find Cas not only fully clothed, but in the process of wrestling with the tiny coffee maker on the desk. He tossed the clothes he’d changed out of in the general direction of his duffel and hurried over to give Cas a hand.

“You gotta slide the whole thing in here,” Dean said, pointing to the top of the machine.

Cas dropped the filter packet back into the flimsy plastic tray and wrangled it into place. He pressed the start button and glared at the machine for a few seconds until it started burbling, and then gave Dean a relieved smile.

“It’s a less than ideal design,” Cas offered as something to break the tension between them.

“Yeah, but it’s cheap and easy for housekeeping to clean up. Just toss the whole thing out. You could probably say the same for the coffee it makes.”

Cas snorted but didn’t disagree. “It’s possible that Sam is already awake. We don’t have to wait here until nine. There’s probably better coffee in the motel’s cafe.”

They both stood there watching coffee-tinged water dribble down into a small paper cup.

“That looks sad,” Dean said, turning away to pack up his bag. “Let’s go find some real coffee.”

They picked up their bags, gave the room one last sweep to make sure they weren’t abandoning any odd socks, and then headed out to the car, leaving the wan little cup of coffee right where it was.

Sam found them about twenty minutes later, sitting side by side at a table in the motel’s lobby cafe. It was still well before their agreed upon meeting time, and Sam was both surprised and relieved to find them both in such apparent high spirits, and blessedly not hung over. He assumed the breakfast buffet had played a significant role, and as he scoped out the selection he caught some of their conversation. Dean extolled the virtues of the motel’s self-service waffle maker while Cas nodded along. Sam bypassed the waffle machine entirely and poured himself a bowl of raisin bran and a glass of orange juice before settling in across from Dean at their table.

“So you guys are up early, huh?” Sam asked, looking between them both.

Dean shrugged, his mouth too full of syrupy waffle to reply. That left it to Cas.

“We came in search of coffee, but Dean saw the waffle machine and we decided to stay to eat. I’m sorry we didn’t wait for you, Sam.”

Sam laughed and shook his head, digging in to his cereal. “It’s no big deal, Cas. I guess you guys didn’t have a wild and crazy night, then.”

Dean snorted, reaching for his coffee. “We had a couple of excellent burgers and enjoyed the atmosphere for a while, but we’re here to work, right? No time for wild and crazy when there’s lives to be saved and dragons to be vanquished, or whatever.”

Sam made a scoffing noise around his cereal and shook his head. “I doubt we’re after anything as exciting as a dragon. Probably someone’s half deflated pool float with a couple seasons of moss growing on it.”

“Hey, you didn’t have to come if you’re gonna take that attitude,” Dean replied, pointing an accusatory, syrup-dripping fork in Sam's direction.

Sam held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, I’m just as happy as you guys to get out of the bunker for a few days for something other than a life and death emergency.”

Dean studied him for a few moments until he was satisfied that Sam was being sincere, gave Cas a careful little glance out the corner of his eye, and then returned his attention to his waffle. Cas cheerfully mopped up the last bit of syrup on his plate with his last bite of waffle, not fazed in the least by Sam’s comments.

“So what’s our angle for this investigation?” Cas asked as he nudged his plate away to make room for his coffee cup.

Dean perked up at the question, giving Sam the once-over. They’d all independently chosen casual attire, and even Sam was wearing one of his regular blue plaid flannels. This definitely wasn’t gonna be a law enforcement gig, and Dean grinned to himself as he finished off his own waffles. Sam cleared his throat and slid his ipad across the table to Cas, who looked down at the website for the Healing Waters Spa. Dean leaned in to read over his shoulder, and they both frowned down at it as Cas scrolled to the bottom of the page.

“That’s it?” Dean said, frowning up at Sam. “A picture of the front door, a generic description, and contact info?”

Sam shrugged. “So they don’t have a great marketing team. I called last night, by the way, ready to ask about their rates and booking a visit, but it goes straight to voicemail. From the answering message, you’d think you got the wrong number. It’s weird.”

“Maybe you called after office hours?” Cas suggested, checking the time. “It’s nearly nine now. Maybe someone will answer.”

Dean pulled out his phone and dialed the number listed on the site. Again, it went straight to voicemail. He held the phone so that Cas could lean in and hear the message as well. It went directly into the no-nonsense message, delivered by a warm and friendly female voice that sounded vaguely familiar to Dean, even if he couldn’t place it.

“ _ Thanks for calling. Please leave a message with the quickest way to contact you. If this is an emergency, please follow the standard protocols. _ ”

Then came the beep, and Dean hung up without leaving a message. He and Cas wore equally puzzled looks while Sam sat across from them with one raised eyebrow.

“Strange, right?” Sam said, sitting back in his seat.

“Who the fuck ever had a spa emergency?” Dean said.

“I’d venture to say that that’s either the wrong number, or else Healing Waters isn’t actually a spa,” Cas suggested.

Sam nodded. “That’s what I figured, too. So why even bother having a fake website up at all? What are they actually doing out there, and does it have anything to do with the lake monster story?”

Dean considered that for a few moments and then sighed. “Okay, then. You just wanna go in cold, knock on the door and see who or what answers?”

Sam’s brow pinched down. “I’ve been thinking about it all night, and honestly couldn’t come up with anything better. It still sounds like a bullshit case, but there’s definitely something weird going on here. Oh, and then there’s this,” he added, reaching across the table for his ipad.

Sam tapped away on the screen for a few seconds and then handed it back to Dean.

“It’s an error message, Sam. What the fuck did you want me to see?”

“That’s the article about the lake monster. The page it was posted on was taken down last night. I couldn’t find any mention of it anywhere else online, either. It’s like the whole thing never even happened.”

Dean sighed and gulped down the rest of his coffee before pushing his chair back and getting up. “What the hell did we stumble over here?”

“Could this be one of the traps Michael set up last year to lure in hunters?” Cas asked.

Dean shook his head slowly. “All his pet monsters ran for the hills when they burned through their magical mojo powerups. Why would any of ‘em make targets outta themselves like this now? Mikey’s not around to back them up anymore.”

Sam scoffed. “You really think any other hunter would’ve bothered to even look twice at this as if it was a case?”

Cas narrowed his eyes at Sam, but Dean answered. “Hey, it’s the sort of thing we’d at least give a glance at if we happened to be passing through. Like the world’s second largest ball of twine, or whatever.”

Sam laughed at that and finished off the last of his juice. “So what, you think monsters are going into business as paranormal roadside attractions? I mean, that’s not a half bad idea. I kinda hope none of them actually think of that.” He sat there blinking for a second and then shook himself out of whatever nightmare scenario he’d conjured up. “So we should probably go in prepared for anything, but not kicking down the door, guns blazing or anything. Worst case scenario, we can go the lost idiot tourist route.”

“If things go south, plead stupidity and ask directions?” Dean asked, and Sam nodded. “Okay then. It’s a half-assed plan, but this is a half-assed case.”

They cleared their table and headed out to drive out to the lake. As soon as they pulled out of the parking lot, the girl at the front desk picked up her phone and engaged the emergency protocol.


	4. Chapter 4

The drive to the Healing Waters Spa took a bit longer than expected. It wasn’t all that far to drive, but the turnoff from the main road was difficult to spot. There wasn’t a mailbox or a road sign to mark the entrance, and they had to resort to Sam’s gps, the process of elimination, and a stroke of sheer luck before finally finding the narrow driveway between two overgrown oaks. The fact they’d driven past it three times before they eventually spotted it did give them a chance to pull over in a more secluded location than the motel’s parking lot to gear up, which they accomplished down by a disused fishing pier about a mile past the spa before turning around and driving back again.

They decided a balanced approach would be best. Between the three of them they were prepared for almost any potential situation they might find at the spa, short of an entire monster army. Or possibly an actual lake monster. Dean had argued if they were playing dumb tourists, they could probably get away with bringing a whole bag of weapons with them to the front door disguised as an innocent overnight bag, but Sam had shot down that idea.

“We don’t wanna start a war with a spa, Dean. If something’s shady, we’ll scope it out so we have some idea of what it is we need to kill, first. And there’s every chance there’s nothing supernatural going on there at all and this is all just a huge misunderstanding.”

“Yeah, we’ll see,” Dean replied, while Cas gave him a sympathetic nod. “Something about this is just too weird to be normal.”

“I agree with Dean,” Cas replied, tucking a gun loaded with iron rounds into the back of his waistband and settling his jacket over it. “There’s definitely something suspicious going on here, but I’m not sure if it’s sinister or merely unusual.”

Dean slammed the trunk and laughed. “Okay, where do you draw the line there?”

Cas considered it seriously as they all got back in the car. “A lake monster would be unusual. If it were eating people, it would be sinister.”

“Okay, then. So murder and cannibalism is your line. Got it.”

“It’s not cannibalism if the lake monster is eating people,” Cas argued while Sam fiddled with the gps and did his best to ignore them both. “Unless the monster was also human.”

Dean nodded seriously in his rear view mirror, trying not to laugh at the very serious face Cas was giving him. “So, if it’s Hannibal Lecter in swim trunks, we’re gonna go with evil?”

“That sounds reasonable, yes,” Cas replied, just as Sam’s phone instructed them to drive a quarter mile back to the main road and turn right.

Dean slowed down well in advance of their turn and eased them between the two huge trees and down the shady road that widened out just beyond them. A massive, sprawling, carefully restored Victorian house came into view around a bend, a narrow finger of the lake stretching out in the distance beyond it. The driveway split off into a smaller road that disappeared around the far side of the house and a turnaround loop that encircled a small but lovingly tended garden just outside the front door, which was painted the same deep blue as the door pictured on the spa’s website. At least they knew they’d found the right building, since they still hadn’t seen a sign for the spa, or even a house number.

“Well, nobody would mistake this place for any of the other houses we’ve seen around here,” Dean said, leaning forward to try to take in the entire building after shutting off the engine on the far side of the turnaround loop. “Guess they couldn’t decide on a color to paint it.”

“Victorian houses are traditionally painted this colorfully,” Cas replied. “At least they were originally.”

“You remember looking down from a cloud and watching humans paint ‘em,” Dean said, throwing a smirk over his shoulder, but to his surprise, Cas narrowed his eyes in confusion.

“No, I saw them myself. I told you about the first time I met Lily Sunder.”

The smirk melted off Dean’s face and he deflated a bit at the reminder, but nodded in apology to Cas anyway as Sam got out of the car and stretched. Sam peeked back in, only taking his eyes off the house for a moment.

“You guys comin’, or what?”

Cas returned Dean’s nod in acknowledgement and they both got out of the car. They’d only made it halfway to the front door before it opened, and the last person they ever expected to see greeted them with a nearly-reverent look on her face.

“Sam, Dean, and I assume Castiel?” Marie said as she made her way across the broad front porch and down the steps and across the driveway to the Winchesters, who’d frozen in their tracks at the sight of her. “I’m so glad you made it. We’ve been waiting for you. Please, come in. I’ve got a surprise you’re absolutely gonna love, guaranteed.”

Dean stood there, staring at Marie, mouth opening and closing at a total loss for words. He glanced at Sam, who looked equally stunned, and then over at Cas who was glancing back and forth between the young woman and Dean, patiently waiting for an explanation as to who she was.

“So this is not a monster case?” Cas eventually asked when no further explanation seemed immediately forthcoming.

Marie laughed and shook her head. “No monsters here. I’m Marie, by the way,” she said, offering her hand to Cas. “I met Sam and Dean almost five years ago when I wrote a musical based on Carver Edlund’s novels and they showed up to kill Calliope before she could eat me.”

Cas shook her hand, but squinted harder at Dean. “A musical?”

“Chuck even showed up after the performance, by the way. Not sure if you guys ever knew that. He liked it, apparently.”

Dean grunted at that. “Dude has questionable taste.”

Sam scoffed. “He stole your robe, watched your porn, made you pancakes and brought you donuts, Dean. You’re basically the same person.”

“How dare you,” Dean replied, while Cas shifted his glare to Sam, clearly taking at least as much offence as Dean did.

Sam just shrugged, and they all turned back to see Marie now blinking at them in open-mouthed shock. She took a careful step closer to them and dropped her voice nearly to a whisper.

“So you guys just… hang out with him?”

“Not if we can help it,” Dean replied, while Sam said, “Not for a few years now.”

Cas noticed Marie’s disappointment, and added, “Dean reunited him with his sister several years ago, and they’ve since moved on from this plane.”

“God has a sister?” Marie replied.

That finally got Dean laughing. “So you finally believe us now? We’re not too old to be Sam and Dean from the books?”

Marie took a deep breath and shook her head. “I believe you. And so does everyone else here. This is a safe space. And one that the three of you made possible. Come on in, and I’ll show you.”

The three of them looked at one another and Sam finally shrugged.

“Okay, then. Lead the way.”

Marie grinned at them and bounded up the front steps while they followed at a more cautious pace. She slipped in through the front door and held it open as Sam, Dean and Cas made their way inside, and then shut it behind them.

“So you might’ve guessed we’re not really a spa,” Marie said, by way of explanation. “Well, technically we are, but we’re not open to the general public. We have a very specific clientele. Which is where you guys come in.”

“We are your specific clientele?” Cas asked.

Marie grinned at him. “You are this weekend, but in general, Jamie and Tina take in folks who have had unfortunate brushes with the supernatural and give them a place to recover, where nobody will question their sanity and they can really feel free to come to terms with what’s happened to their lives.”

“So there ain’t no lake monster? You made the whole story up?” Dean asked with a smirk.

Marie shook her head. “I just graduated with a degree in creative writing, so I’m glad to know Chuck got his money’s worth.”

“Chuck paid for your education?” Sam asked, incredulous.

Marie just shrugged. “An anonymous patron paid for all four years of my degree, and all my expenses. Even put in a good word for me with the writing program. I think it’s the reason I was accepted in the first place, honestly. I always assumed it was Chuck, but I was never really sure about that. I mean, unless you guys have some magical stash of cash you secretly use to fund random people’s educations?” She gave them wide eyes, wondering if it might be true.

“It wasn’t us, sorry,” Sam replied. “But that sounds like the sort of random thing Chuck would get a kick out of.”

She led them through the front hall and into a large open living room, the back wall entirely constructed of huge glass doors leading out to another garden, with a view of the woods and lake in the distance. It was nothing if not peaceful.

“So, can I get you anything? Something to drink? Kendra said you guys just had breakfast before leaving the motel, so I’m gonna assume you’re good until lunch, but we’ve got coffee, tea, soda…”

“Who’s Kendra?” Dean asked, feeling a little weird about someone spying on them and reporting their activities back to Marie like that.

“You saved her life once, about ten years ago. People thought they were being given instructions from angels, but it turned out to be the ghost of a murdered priest,” Marie said, and waited for Sam and Dean to remember before going on. “You saved her from her date, who she swears was gonna kill her, and then a few years later she read about the entire thing in a Supernatural book, and the rest is history.”

“History,” Dean replied. “So all the people who find their way here figured out everything in the books is real, and somehow tracked you guys down?”

Marie shrugged. “That’s how I found this place, so, yeah.” She stood by as Sam, Dean, and Cas made themselves comfortable on several sofas surrounding a stone fireplace, and glanced around at the framed photos covering the walls. “So, uh, you guys know a Charlie Bradbury, right?”

“We know two, actually,” Cas replied.

“Oh! Um… redhead, can do anything on a computer, kissed a fairie once and made you her handmaiden?”

“Yeah, that’s OG Charlie,” Dean replied. “She was murdered by Frankenazis about four years ago.”

Marie frowned at that. “That’s… not possible? I talked to her about six months ago.”

Dean turned to Sam. “Has Charlie been going around pretending to be OG Charlie?”

“I seriously doubt it,” Sam replied. “She’s been hanging out with Rowena quite a bit, but she made it very clear that she’s not our Charlie, and doesn’t want to be our Charlie.”

Marie looked confused at that, and slumped down in a chair, resting her elbows on her knees. “Wait, are they twins or something?”

“Our new Charlie is from an alternate universe,” Cas replied. “She arrived here about a year ago.”

“Well I think you guys are definitely out of the loop somewhere, because I’ve been talking to Charlie every few months for the last five years. She said she’s off the radar, but I didn’t think that meant you had no idea she was even alive. And she’s also mentioned this Rowena, so I think you might need to have a little talk with her.” Marie gave a nervous little laugh, hoping she hadn’t said something she wasn’t supposed to.

“Yeah, I guess we do,” Dean replied, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

Marie sprang to her feet, clapped her hands together and pasted on a hearty smile. “So, subject change. Drinks? I think we’re gonna need drinks, if the rest of the day goes anything like the last five minutes have. Okay, I’ll be right back with some coffee. You guys make yourselves at home.” She slowly backed out of the room through a tall archway, laughing nervously before finally turning and bolting for the kitchen.

“What the hell?” Dean asked quietly of no one in particular as the three of them stood there taking in the whole place, with a particular focus on a wall covered with framed photos of dozens of people who were all familiar to varying degrees.

“Holy shit,” Sam said, touching one outstretched hand to a photograph of a woman he hadn’t even thought about in nearly a decade.

“What, you know her?” Dean asked.

Sam just nodded. “She gave me a job when I tried to go civilian back during the apocalypse. I worked at her bar until Lucifer started visiting me in my dreams and I called you to get back in.”

“How the hell did she ever figure out who you were, if you were just playing civilian?”

“Some hunters showed up one night,” Sam said, his voice gone quiet. “I think I told you about it when I called that night. They were chasing down some demons a few towns over and tried to recruit me into their hunt. I guess the demons spilled the beans about my powers, because they came back with a bottle of demon blood and tried to force me to go with them. It, uh, didn’t go well. But Lindsey was right there. They were holding her hostage. I left the next morning and never looked back.”

Dean and Cas both studiously examined the rest of the pictures to give Sam a moment to pull himself together. It had been a shit time in their lives, and Dean did not need to think about what he’d been doing the night Sam had called to tell him about Lucifer. He cast a nervous glance over at Cas, but of course Cas didn’t know the details of that awful future that never came to pass. Dean just shoved it aside and went on trying to place everyone in the photos. They were all people he recalled from hunts-- some of them years in the past. He’d never even known some of their names, like Kendra the motel manager. Some of them he’d known pretty damn well. Biblically, even.

“Holy shit.” It was Dean’s turn this time. He pointed at a picture of a pretty blonde woman that even Sam recognized after a few seconds, his eyes going wide. “Jamie from Oktoberfest. I’m kinda in the mood for one of those big pretzels now, damn.”

“Sorry, Dean, we’re fresh out of pretzels, but I’ve got a pot of coffee and some butter cookies,” Jamie said, carrying a tray loaded down with coffee cups and a big thermal coffee carafe. Marie followed behind with another tray of cookies.

Dean just blinked at her for a moment, while Cas again had to wait for an explanation, let alone an introduction. Jamie set the tray down on the table and began pouring and handing out coffee.

“Long time, no see, right?” she said, handing Sam a cup since he was the only partially functional person in the room.

“Um, yeah,” Dean replied, taking a seat on the sofa and making room for Cas beside him. Cas sat down too, but continued to regard Dean with a quizzical look until Dean finally cleared his throat and replied. “So you’re not bartending anymore?”

Jamie snorted and handed him his coffee. “I’m still serving drinks, apparently, but no. I sold the bar back in Canonsburg about a year after the shapeshifter. Believe it or not, it was Ed Brewer who turned me on to the Supernatural novels a few months later. He came running into the bar one night practically incoherent and shoved  _ Monster Movie _ into my hands and refused to leave until I swore I’d read it. And after reading about myself in a book, right down to the very last intimate detail…” she gave Dean a significant look with one raised eyebrow, and Dean grimaced in apology.

“Yeah, I had no idea we had a recording secretary spying on our entire lives back then. Sorry about that.”

Jamie shrugged and handed Cas a mug of coffee, and he nodded his thanks. “Not everyone gets a play by play rendering of one of the wildest nights of their lives. Every time I wonder if I imagined it all, I can just go reread it.”

“Yeah,” Dean replied, casting an uncomfortable glance at Cas and forcing a small, awkwardly flirty smile. “Not everyone gets drugged and abducted by a movie obsessed shapeshifter and has to fight for their life in lederhosen, either.”

“If it’s any consolation, I thought you looked cute in the shorts,” Jamie replied. “But let’s just say I started collecting up folks after that. After I met some other people in a similar situation on the Supernatural fan site, we got to talking about opening up a retreat of sorts for folks who didn’t walk away from their stint as Supernatural side characters as well as we did. Dana Wallace found this property for sale, and I traded the bar for a spa and haven’t looked back.”

“They’ve turned this place into a hub for a whole network of people,” Marie informed them. “Some have gone on to hunt themselves, but most of us just keep an eye out for the weird stuff and give everyone the heads up when something extra weird is going down. Like that whole thing with the sun shrinking a few years back. Good thing that straightened itself out.”

Dean gave an ugly little laugh and rubbed at his temple. “Yeah, good thing.”

“So Chuck isn’t still publishing books, is he?” Sam asked hesitantly.

Marie shook her head. “Nothing official since Swan Song, but he sends Becky an occasional draft to post as fanfic, and it goes out to our network. Sometimes it’s just a scene or two, but sometimes it’s a novel-length thing. We’re the only ones who know which works are actually canon… er… or  _ real _ , as it were.”

“We try to reach out to folks Chuck mentions by name when we can,” Jamie added. “Like Michelle Tilghman.”

Dean and Sam gave each other a shocked look before turning back to Jamie. “Michelle, whose husband was turned into a werewolf on their honeymoon and tried to kill us all?” Dean asked.

“What?” Cas asked.

It was Marie that answered. “You were possessed by Lucifer at the time, apparently. Sam took on the werewolf hunt to give Dean a break, because he’d been killing himself trying to find a way to un-possess you. And it just… didn’t turn out very well.” She frowned down into her mug for a second, but then smiled up at them all. “But I guess everything turned out okay eventually, right? I mean, here you all are, not currently dead or possessed by Satan or anything.”

“Uh, right,” Dean replied, glancing over and seeing the pained look on Cas’s face. He tried to tell him with his eyes that they could talk about it later, that it was water under the bridge, and that Marie was right. They were all here, alive, and themselves, and they apparently didn’t even have a lake monster to hunt. “So Chuck knows what you’re up to, then?”

Jamie shrugged. “Omniscience is like that, yeah. We like to think he’s trying to help us help as many people as we can, pointing us in the right direction so we can do the most good.”

“That’s how I ended up here,” a young woman said as she walked in through one of the large glass doors. “Hey, Dean, Sam. It’s great to see you again, and honestly there was a time I never thought I’d say those words.”

Dean blinked at the girl, or woman again. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been _maybe_ fifteen, which was bizarre because the first time he’d seen her she’d been in her thirties. Now she looked more like the adult she’d been. “Tina, hey. You grew up again.”

She snorted as she sat down in a chair opposite him. “Time has a funny way of doing that to a person.”

“So was your second childhood better than your first?” he asked.

Tina shrugged and smiled at Jamie. “I’ve got no complaints. We do good work here, and I don’t need to assume a false identity just to fit in. It feels pretty good, actually.”

Dean saw Sam nod out the corner of his eye, but the bulk of his attention was still on Cas.

“So, who’s this?” Tina asked, nodding in Cas’s direction.

Dean cleared his throat. “Cas, this is Tina. Remember I told you about the witch who turned me into a teenager for a day, four or five years ago? Well, Tina got the same treatment, only she didn’t get zapped back into an adult. She decided to take the longer road back. And uh, Tina, this is Castiel.”

Her eyes went wide for a moment, but then she nodded slowly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Cas.”

“Hey, I didn’t get an introduction, either,” Jamie said, with a teasing grin, taking it upon herself. “These two showed up in town shortly after you pulled Dean here out of Hell,” she told Cas, and then raised an eyebrow at Dean. “What was it you told me back then?  _ Near-death experience _ my ass. But it’s all good. I probably wouldn’t have taken the truth quite so well back then.” She looked back at Cas, took a deep breath and let her sincerity show all over her face. “And  _ thank you _ . For saving him, for fighting back, for being who you are and for figuring out who you wanted to be.”

Cas looked so entirely stunned, his mouth dropped open just blinking at Jamie, that Dean reached over and patted his knee. Dean fought against his own face, which was doing its damnedest to turn as watery and grateful as Jamie’s, but at least Cas was too focused on her to notice. He hoped, anyway. The touch was enough to jolt Cas out of his shock.

“It’s been entirely my pleasure,” Cas replied. 

Sam huffed out a little laugh. “Sorry about that. None of us are really all that used to getting that sort of recognition, but especially Cas.”

“Yeah, well maybe he should have a chance to get used to it,” Marie added with a grin.

Cas shifted his focus to her and tilted his head just a bit.

“Don’t give me that look,” Marie said. “That’s why we lured you guys down here in the first place. We’ve been waiting for the right time to show you what we’ve done here. All of this, all the people we’ve helped, are only here because you guys saved them. So we all wanted to show our gratitude, and thank you for making all of this possible.”

“So you invented a monster in hopes we'd actually take the bait,” Sam said slowly, “just so all of you could…  _ thank  _ us?”

Marie and Tina both nodded, before Jamie continued. “To thank you, and to show you just how much what you’ve done for us has truly meant to us.”

“You guys mostly see the bloody aftermath,” Marie said. “Or you have to break the news about the things that go bump in the night to people and leave them in shock. We thought you deserved to know that that’s not all there is, you know? We survived, and we’re all thriving, because of you. We wanted you to have a chance to understand just how much we appreciate it. You deserve to know.”

“Plus, we all agreed that you guys  _ really _ need a vacation,” Tina added. “Have you even taken a single day off since I saw you last?”

“Yeah, we have,” Dean replied, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest with a little frown. “We do have a home, you know. We’re not always running from one hunt to the next.”

“Just yesterday we were thinking of taking a leisurely road trip,” Cas began, and then frowned. “Until we saw your article online and used it as an excuse to come here.”

Marie nodded enthusiastically and turned to Jamie. “See? I told you it was just the right balance of mystery and intrigue to lure them in.”

Jamie held up her hands in surrender. “I didn’t doubt you. I didn’t win the betting pool on how long it would take them to show up, but I staked my dollar on it.”

“Betting pool?” Dean asked.

“Yeah, and you paid off about twelve hours too early for my wager,” Jamie said with a grin. “We’ve got a huge local community up in town, and the phone was ringing off the hook last night when you drove in.”

“That would’ve been the emergency protocol mentioned on your website?” Sam asked, one eyebrow raised as he put all the pieces together. “So it’s not for spa emergencies?”

Jamie nodded. “Yeah. When people come through here, they’re welcome to stay on as long as they need to. A good number of them eventually move out into the town. We run about half the local businesses, now. We used to run this place like a real day spa just to cover the bills, but now we’re funded entirely by the rest of our local shops, restaurants, and motels. Including our in-town salon and spa.”

“So you’ve forged a community of survivors, and a retreat for healing after that sort of trauma,” Cas said. “That’s…” he looked over at Sam and Dean, at a loss for words.

It was Sam who finished his sentence. “That’s awesome, actually.”

“We like to think so,” Jamie said with a smile.

The six of them sat there for a few minutes, quietly sipping their coffee and letting Sam, Dean, and Cas wrap their heads around it all. Dean eventually reached for a cookie, humming in satisfaction at the sweet, buttery crunch. He washed it down with a sip of coffee, and then reached for the pot to refill his mug. Cas held out his cup for a refill as well, and as he set the pot back on the table, he cleared his throat and looked right at Jamie.

“So, now that we’re here, what do you charge for spa services?”

Tina snorted out a laugh, but let Jamie answer. “For you guys, nothing. You’re our guests this week. You’re welcome to say as long as you want, or until you find a real hunt you need to take care of.”

“Actually,” Marie said, sitting forward in her chair and setting her cup down. “There is only one thing we want in exchange.”

Dean laughed. “I hope you’re not angling for our firstborn.”

“No, idiot. We just want some truths.”

“Truths?” Sam asked warily.

“Yeah,” Tina replied. “Fill in the blanks where Chuck left stuff out, and then catch us up with what’s really been going on since Swan Song.”

Sam, Dean, and Cas exchanged a nervous glance, before Dean said, “Uh, then I hope you got a lot of time on your hands, because that was almost a decade ago now.”

Jamie shrugged. “We invited you guys here for exactly this purpose. We’ve got time.”


	5. Chapter 5

Tina offered to clean up from their coffee and cookies while Jamie and Marie took them on a tour of the rest of the property. They walked out through the big glass doors to a wide porch overlooking a long wooded lawn down to the boat house Dean remembered from the blurry photos in Marie’s article. He looked over a collection of fishing rods mounted on a rack at the front of the building.

“So, you do a lot of fishing?” Dean asked, turning to Jamie while Cas edged in behind him to look more closely at the gear.

Jamie shrugged. “Not particularly, but some of the townies store their gear here. A few of the guys are pretty avid fishermen.”

“So you’re not just a women’s retreat?” Sam asked.

“Nope,” Marie said, the end of the word popping defiantly. “The only requirement to earn a spot around here is needing a safe place to recover from discovering the monsters are all real.”

Jamie nodded. “The townies are basically our graduates, and our local support network. They come by as needed to help others learn to adjust to life in the know.”

“The two of you, and Tina too, seem to have adjusted pretty well,” Dean replied.

Jamie smiled at him, and for the first time since he’d seen her photo up on that wall, Dean really thought back to the few days they’d spent together once upon a time. Back then, he’d been attracted to her the moment he’d laid eyes on her, but now he was almost relieved that she hadn’t so much as winked at him. He glanced over his shoulder to find Cas right where he’d expected him, standing at his side and looking comfortably pleased that things were going so well, so relaxed and easy. Dean took a deep breath and let Cas’s own contentment ground him. When he finally turned back to Jamie she gave him a knowing smile.

“You seem to have adjusted pretty well yourself,” she said.

After that, Dean really began to relax. They walked around the property, alternating between hearing the stories of some of the people they’d saved over the years and telling their own stories of everything from the alternate universes they’d visited to what was up with the sun a few years back and how Dean had helped put it to rights. Sam talked about his own little community of hunters he’d been working with, and Cas talked about adjusting to life as a human. Marie recounted some of their biggest success stories who were too busy around the country on various missions counseling some of their newer recruits to make it back in time to meet with the Winchesters in person, and Jamie listed off a few of the people around town who hoped to have a chance to stop by and thank them in person.

By the time they made it back to the main house, several new people had arrived. Jamie opened the back door to find a rather shell shocked looking young woman waiting in the front hall talking quietly with Tina. She paused for only a moment before setting her shoulders and walking inside, followed by Marie, and then Sam, Dean, and Cas. Tina glanced over her shoulder at them, and with a tiny nod from Jamie she returned her attention to the woman. A moment later, the front door opened and Michelle Tilghman and a man Dean hadn’t ever expected to see again walked through carrying several large bags apiece. The man froze in his tracks for just a second, blinking at the strange group of people standing across the room, before giving them a resolute nod and excusing himself upstairs with what appeared to be a heavy suitcase and a large plastic trash bag filled to bursting.

Jamie and Marie frowned at each other but nodded, and Marie excused herself to go greet their new guest while Michelle started to follow the man up the stairs with her bags. As soon as she saw them, Michelle wandered over and dropped her bags, pausing just in front of Sam and Dean, looking from one to the other of them, and then smiled.

“Well, look what the lake monster dragged in.”

“Michelle,” Dean said, at a complete loss for words.

“Dean,” she replied, raising an eyebrow at him and daring him to say something.

Dean pulled himself together and shook off the shock of seeing her again, doing far better than than she had been the last time. She’d been unable to bring herself to leave the hospital where her husband had killed several people and then tried to turn her into a werewolf. It had been one hell of a bad day all around.

“It’s really good to see you smiling, Michelle,” he finally managed.

Michelle laughed at that and pulled him into an unexpected hug. She released him, and then hugged an equally stunned Sam.

“It’s always a good day to smile when we can save someone, right?” she said, turning her head ever so slightly to the woman by the door. “Her boyfriend’s in the hospital, but he’s gonna live. I’m going back to Shreveport to pick him up when he’s released, but I live for saving people from camping trips gone wrong, now.”

Dean snorted but still shook his head in disbelief.

“You were right about one thing, Dean. I am okay again. My life might be the farthest thing from normal, but I am perfectly fine with that.”

Dean cleared his throat. “Yeah, you were right, too. There’s no normal after what you went through.”

“Maybe not, but I learned there was definitely somewhere for me to go,” she said, turning her grin on Jamie. “The rest of the world might not see this as normal, but we all know we’re not alone, here. It’s normal for  _ us _ , and that’s all that matters.”

Cas stood by, frowning, and Michelle held out her hand for him to shake.

“Where are my manners? I’m Michelle, and these two saved me once upon a time.”

“Yeah, well, you helped save both of us, as well,” Sam replied.

Cas shook her hand and introduced himself. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Castiel, and I’d like to humbly thank you for any assistance you may have given Sam and Dean.”

“Assistance?” Michelle said with a snort. “I’m still not sure what I even helped you do, Dean, but I’m glad it didn’t kill you permanently.”

Cas turned a shocked glare on Dean, who began fidgeting under the weight of it, and muttered to Cas. “I needed to talk to Billie, and Michelle helped make sure that wasn’t a permanent situation.”

Cas’s glare narrowed, and Dean’s brow pinched together.

“It was years ago, before she got promoted, and I didn’t exactly have her business card.”

Sam, attempting to capitalize on Dean’s discomfort and the opportunity to give Cas a little more ammo, went ahead and made the situation worse. “Like you almost did the day Cas came back from the Empty?”

“You did this more than once, Dean?” Cas blurted, unable to contain his distress.

“He’s done it at least four times I know about. But you already knew about how he got my soul back, and that time when we were in prison in that black site.”

Sensing the tension, Marie had to ask. “Who’s Billie?”

“Death,” Dean replied without taking his eyes from Cas. “She’s Death.”

Marie nodded to herself, attempting to absorb that information, but then shook her head and cut in. “Wait, I thought Death was an old dude who liked Chicago pizza?”

Dean finally tore his gaze from Cas to grimace at Marie. “Yeah, he was. I may have accidentally killed him that one time, right before the Darkness was released. Billie took over the job after Cas killed her about a year later. She was a reaper before that.”

“Okay, right,” Marie said, clearly ready to let this conversation drop for now.

Cas continued to glare at Dean and muttered under his breath, “We are not done talking about this,” but he let it go for the time being.

Sam, figuring he’d gotten his money’s worth out of his comment, helped change the subject. “So who’s this?” he asked, nodding toward the woman who’d followed Marie over to their little group and now stood almost hidden behind her and Michelle.

“This is Delana,” Michelle said, introducing the rest of them in turn. “She helped me save her boyfriend’s life when they were attacked by a rogue werewolf who’d been preying on unregistered campers. Damn government shutdown got a lot of people killed before we even realized that people were disappearing. At least we’re on it now.”

Michelle turned all her attention to Delana.

“Are you sure you wanna stay here? Because Linus and I would be happy to keep you company if you wanna come back to the hospital with us and wait for Brian to be discharged.”

“It’s entirely up to you,” Jamie offered with a welcoming smile. “If you don’t want to go back there, Brian will be safe, and he’ll be here with you again in a day or two.”

Delana bit her lip and looked down at her bags at her feet.  _ Brian’s _ bag, with a slash along the side of it, presumably from a werewolf’s claw. She shook her head. “I don’t think I can go back there yet. Brian wanted me safe. It’s why you brought me here to begin with.”

Michelle nodded and pulled her into a one armed hug, bending down a little to catch her eyes. “Well, there’s no safer place on the planet than wherever the Winchesters are, okay?” she finished, glancing up at Dean and smiling. “We’ll go keep Brian safe now, and we’ll call you with updates as soon as he’s released. It shouldn’t be more than a day or so, okay?”

Delana pulled her into a tight hug and heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank you. I don’t know if I can ever repay you, but thank you.”

“It’s all right now. You’re gonna be all right, even if it doesn’t seem like it right now. You’re alive, and you’re gonna keep on living.”

Delana sniffed and nodded, as Michelle finally turned back to Sam and Dean. “Well, I’m glad I got to see you guys. I wasn’t sure I’d be back here so soon.”

“Yeah, good seeing you doing so well,” Dean replied.

Michelle nodded, and then bent down to pick up Delana’s bags. “Come on, we’ll get you settled in upstairs, and then I’ll get back on the road.”

As they walked away, Jamie frowned. “Well, that’s gonna present a little problem.”

Marie nodded. “Yup, now we only have two vacant rooms.”

Jamie closed her eyes for a moment and rubbed at her temple. “I mean, we’re never gonna turn away a survivor, so I understand if you guys would rather stay up at the motel in town. Or one of you, anyway. We’ve still got two other rooms, and I guess there’s always the sofa here, or the one in my office.”

Marie snorted. “You’re talking about guys who’ve spent most of their lives living out of their car, James. I don’t think they’re gonna complain they each didn’t get a private suite.”

Dean laughed at that. “Yeah, we’ve done worse than double up in a skeezy motel room. Trust me, anywhere you put us will be fine.” He paused for a second and then blurted out, “‘Sides, me and Cas don’t mind sharing, right?”

Cas gave him a tiny smile that barely registered to anyone else in the room, but Dean took it as the confirmation it was.

“Right, so that’s settled,” Dean said, patting Cas on the shoulder.

He was too distracted to notice Marie biting her lip or Jamie’s look of surprise, and they’d both composed themselves by the time he looked back at them. Sam cleared his throat as the man from earlier walked back down the stairs and over to Jamie. He gave Dean a little nod and a polite smile, but he returned Sam’s confused stare, until Sam finally placed him and blurted it out.

“Oh my god, Deputy Linus. From Colorado.” He turned to Dean trying to convey exactly who it was they were talking to, but Dean just regarded him with a raised eyebrow as Sam gesticulated. “Years ago, the ghost sickness case. You ran away from a yorkie and drove the speed limit, remember?”

“Yeah, Sam. Unfortunately I remember.”

“It’s Sheriff Linus, now,” the man replied, holding out a hand to Sam. “Or just Steve, around here. It’s good to see you guys again. And it’s especially good to see Dean when he’s not dying of ghost sickness, even if I didn’t know that at the time. The things you learn from books.” He gave them a little smirk.

“Yeah, Steve’s another lucky duck who got to read about himself in the Supernatural novels,” Jamie said. “When we relocated here, he took a job as the local sheriff. It’s convenient to have someone in law enforcement in the know.”

“Tell me about it,” Dean replied, giving Steve an awkward smile.

Things were about to get almost as uncomfortable as they had back when Dean had been cursed into experiencing someone else’s terror, and he’d tried to self-medicate with whiskey. Sam had teased him about having to drag him out of the sheriff’s office for weeks, and had recounted in vivid detail how Dean had just stood there grinning awkwardly at Linus. Luckily Michelle came bounding down the stairs before things became that strained again.

“Okay, we got her set up in Silver, because it’ll be big enough for Brian to join her in there once we bring him back. Salt and Iron are still free, but with Marie in Holy Water, it looks like we’re booked solid for the moment. I put in a call to Kendra to let her know she’s on call for any overflow.”

“Thanks, Michelle. Keep us updated,” Jamie replied, giving Michelle a quick hug.

“Will do.” She turned to Sam, Dean, and Cas. “Don’t be strangers now that you know where we are.”

Dean nodded, and cleared his throat. “Yeah, same. You know if you ever run into something you can’t figure out, give us a call.”

Michelle grinned and nodded, and then linked her arm through Steve’s and led him out the front door. He turned to give a wave over his shoulder as she dragged him off. Once they were gone, it was Cas who had something to say. He frowned at Dean and spoke barely loud enough to be heard.

“I was forbidden from interfering when you were possessed by the buruburu. I would never abandon you to suffer that torment alone now.”

Dean blinked at him and opened his mouth, closing it and shaking his head. “That was a long damn time ago, Cas. I know you were just being a good little soldier back then.”

“I was being demoted for suggesting that I should intervene and banish the spirit that was attacking you. Uriel suggested letting you fight it on your own would  _ build character _ , and our superiors agreed that I was already compromised by my association with you.”

“Yeah, well, associating with Winchesters is a slippery slope,” Dean replied with an uneasy laugh. “We’re all good now.”

“See? We’re already getting some of the story behind the story,” Marie said, clasping her hands together and grinning at them as Tina came back downstairs.

“So who’s ready for lunch?” Tina asked, inviting them all through to the kitchen.

Sam forced himself to look away from Dean and Cas, to smooth out the furrow in his brow, and provide just a minute of cover for them if he could, since he’d been at least partly responsible for their current discomfort. He’d meant to wind Dean up a little bit, not send both him and Cas into a roil of existential despair. “Sounds good to me. Is there anything I can help with?”

Tina laughed and told him to follow her. Jamie and Marie were right behind him. Sam stole one last glance over his shoulder as he turned the corner into the kitchen. The fact Dean hadn’t even used the opportunity to make a joke at his expense about Sam’s cooking abilities-- or lack thereof-- was nearly as concerning as the little bit of the hushed conversation he’d overheard between Dean and Cas. Well, this trip was supposed to give them a chance to unwind a little, and unspooling decade-old hurts probably fell under that umbrella, or so he tried to convince himself.

Dean and Cas finally had a bit of space, but the tension between them only increased in the quiet of the huge empty room. They both tried to talk over one another, Dean attempting to explain himself over his unauthorized meetings with Billie, while Cas attempted to convey his regret for all the times he’d been unable to help Dean back when they’d first met. Dean’s eyes went wide and he cut Cas off before he could go too deep into a recounting of the Rising of the Witnesses. That was water so far under the bridge it had probably looped through the whole water cycle at least half a dozen times by now.

“Cas, none of that matters now, okay? You’re family. I mean, how many times have you thrown yourself in front of a bullet for me? You got nothing to apologize for. If anything, I owe you for everything you’ve done for me since then.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Dean. I’ve caused almost as many problems as I’ve solved for you.”

“Bullshit, Cas,” Dean said, startling Cas into stunned silence. Dean rubbed a hand over his face and dropped his voice, stepping even closer to Cas, and tried again. “All I need from you is for you to stick around. You don’t need to apologize, or prove yourself, or whatever. Just… don’t die again, okay?”

“Seeing as how I’m human now, I believe it’s an inevitability,” Cas replied, still working his way around to understanding Dean’s point.

Dean grumbled, but pressed on. “I don’t mean  _ someday _ , I mean now. I don’t want you to throw yourself on any grenades for me. I’d rather have you alive for the next hunt.”

“I’ll do everything in my ability to survive to assist you on the next hunt, Dean, but I’m not ignorant of the average lifespan of human hunters.”

Dean shook his head and grabbed Cas’s shoulder, looking him right in the eye. “You’re not getting it. I don’t want you alive so you can  _ assist on the next hunt _ . I just want you alive.” He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. He was really gonna have to say it. “When you were gone last time, I didn’t handle it well.”

“You mean when I was in the Empty? You seemed fine when I returned.”

“Yeah, I was only fine because you came back, Cas. But that was probably the worst few weeks of my life, aside from the year I thought Sam was in the cage with Lucifer. Ask Sam, or Jack for that matter. I was a fucking basket case.”

Cas narrowed his eyes, thinking back to something Sam had said earlier. “You talked with Billie the night before I returned from the Empty.”

Dean took it as the accusation it was and nodded. “It wasn’t my intent, but that’s what happened. I died, Cas. Not because I wanted to talk to Billie, because I didn’t even know that was an option at the time, you know? I thought she was dead, too. And mom was gone, and Sam was trying so fucking hard to make me be okay, and I just wasn’t okay, Cas. You were gone, and there was just nothing left for me but to go out saving as many people as I could. If Billie hadn’t sent me back, that would’ve been it. And honestly, I didn’t want her to send me back. I didn’t want to face another day. But then you called, and I had something to live for again.”

Cas tilted his head, his eyes filled with new regret, but also a budding new understanding. “You told me you needed me back, once. I think I didn’t understand the gravity of that statement before.”

Dean had to laugh at that. “I’ve been telling you I need you for years, man.”

“Yes, but there’s a difference between needing a pencil, a useful tool to accomplish a task, and needing food and water and air. I’d been thinking of myself more as the pencil.”

Dean’s chest hurt just thinking about that. He knew he’d been cowardly with his words for a long time, but he had no idea how much that had hurt Cas, far more deeply than he ever could’ve imagined. Standing in the main room of the Healing Waters Spa seemed an appropriate place to start making that right. He choked back a little sob and pulled Cas into a tight hug, rambling on and on in a near whisper.

“You get it now, though, right? You know how bad I need you around, and what I’d do to keep you safe. Seriously, ask Sam how fucked up I was when I thought you were gone forever. You know he was kinda freaked out about how happy I was working that first case back with you.”

Cas wrapped his arms around Dean when it appeared he wasn’t going to let go any time soon. “I assumed it was the cowboy memorabilia that inspired your mood during that case,” he replied. “I know you love cowboys.”

“Cas, it was you. I told Sam we needed a big win, and you were it. The cowboy shit was just icing on that cake.”

Cas hummed and just held on, letting the warmth of Dean’s embrace settle into his bones. He squeezed Dean a little tighter, just as unwilling to let go as Dean was. He felt Dean relax by increments, the tension running out of him with his confessions and the comfort of Cas’s arms around him. They allowed themselves to enjoy the happy little feedback loop they’d created for themselves for a few more minutes until they were both contentedly grinning into each other’s shoulders, gently running hands over each other’s backs, and the strain of their misunderstandings washed away. Cas finally lifted his head from Dean’s shoulder and broke their silence.

“Speaking of cake, I wonder what Sam is helping to prepare for lunch?”

“You had to go and ruin the moment,” Dean replied, leaning back to look into Cas’s eyes with a grin. “For the record, thinking about Sam cooking is always a mood killer. He’s probably making something with spinach.”

“Spinach is high in vitamins, Dean. If you want me to live a long and healthy life, it wouldn’t hurt to eat more leafy greens.”

Dean made a disgusted face and patted Cas’s shoulder as they finally released one another. “Yeah, well, if you’re gonna live a long and  _ happy  _ life, you might as well learn about what good eating really is. And very little of it involves spinach.”

And on that note, they finally joined the others in the kitchen.


	6. Chapter 6

The situation in the kitchen wasn’t nearly as dire as Dean had assumed. Tina had Sam setting out sandwich fixings, and yeah it looked like there was some fresh spinach in there, but at least Dean could ignore it easily enough. They’d walked in on what sounded like the tail end of Sam explaining what had happened to the old Death, and how Billie came to inherit the title. It seemed like a strange subject to be discussing while mixing up a pitcher of iced tea and slicing tomatoes, but such was their lives.

Tina noticed the two of them hanging back in the doorway and grinned over at Dean, pointing to the potato salad she was stirring up. “Sorry we don’t have mac and cheese with marshmallow fluff, but I think this’ll go better with the pastrami.”

Dean laughed and shook his head, giving Cas a little nudge to the small of his back and entering the room. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“Grab a plate and serve yourselves, guys,” Jamie said, and then frowned. “Although I didn’t think angels ate.”

“I haven’t been an angel in a while, and even then I enjoyed the occasional bite of human food,” Cas replied. “Now I mostly eat whatever Dean puts in front of me.”

Marie blinked at him. “Wait, you’re not an angel anymore? How does that even happen?”

Cas recounted his long fall into humanity over lunch, with commentary from Sam and Dean when he tried to take too much of the blame for anything that had happened over the last decade onto himself. For their part, Marie, Jamie, and Tina mostly listened with rapt attention and asked the occasional question.

“Yeah, Chuck never sent that manuscript to us,” Marie said as they cleared the table. “But I get why. That’s incredibly personal. I’m actually kinda relieved he didn’t just send that story along like it was no big deal.”

“Who knew Chuck actually had a line he wouldn’t cross?” Dean muttered under his breath, and Cas laughed darkly.

Tina excused herself to take a selection of sandwiches to Delana up in her room, just as someone else arrived and called out a greeting from the front door.

Jamie jumped to her feet, but Marie beat her out of the kitchen. Jamie turned to Sam and grinned.

“I almost forgot. Marie organized a little surprise for you, Sam.”

“A surprise?” Sam asked, looking from Jamie to Dean for help with a slightly panicked look on his face. “For me?”

“Don’t worry, it’s a good thing,” Jamie assured him with a hand on his wrist. “You’re gonna love it.”

Before they could follow Marie out to the other room, she was back, dragging two familiar faces behind her.

“Hey, it’s little me and little Cas!” Dean said, pointing at them and turning to Sam.

One of the girls snorted, and Marie introduced them. “You remember Kristen and Siobhan, then.”

Cas again looked confused, but Kristen had apparently figured out who he was and gasped, walking right up to him and smiling up into his perplexed face.

“Castiel? I’m Kristen. I played you in Marie’s Supernatural musical. It’s an honor to meet you for real. I didn’t believe it when Marie told us the whole thing was real, but damn. Oh, er… I mean, darn… can you curse in front of an angel?”

She looked around the room, slightly panicked, but Siobhan came forward and wrapped and arm over her shoulders.

“Babe, you were in the play. You read the books. Dean curses plenty. I don’t think Cas is gonna be offended.”

Dean shrugged but smiled at Cas, who beamed back at the girls. “I occasionally curse myself. Chuck does, as well, if that’s any consolation. There’s nothing inherently evil about words.”

“And he’s not an angel anymore,” Marie told Kristen confidentially. “I’ll fill you in later.”

“Oh,” Kristen replied, letting that sink in for a moment before Siobhan gave her a little jiggle and she remembered why they were there. “Right, well, we continued working in the theater in college, and Siobhan here just graduated with a degree in costume design. Marie thought it would be nice to put our skills to use in the real world, so here we are.”

“We were expecting to outfit the moose man with a few decent outfits that didn’t look like they came from the big and tall section of a camping store, and we were prepared to offer Cas a makeover if you were still wearing the trench coat, but I’m glad to see Dean already got you into something else,” Siobhan finished, waving a hand at Cas’s jeans and buttondown shirt. “No trench in sight.”

“What about me?” Dean asked, frowning.

“You already dress fine, Dean,” Marie argued. “We were working on a short deadline, and we figured of the three of you, Sam was the most tragic case.”

Dean grinned at that while Sam sputtered. “Hey! You try finding shirts that fit when you can do this.” He held out his arms to the sides, and then raised them over his head to touch the ceiling. “Especially on a hunter’s budget.”

Marie just nodded sympathetically. “That’s exactly our point. But we’re here to rescue you from your fashion nightmares. No more ugly orange jacket for you!”

“Ugly?” Sam asked, casting a glance over his shoulder at Dean begging for confirmation that his jacket wasn’t ugly.

“Eye of the beholder, Sammy,” Dean replied, as Marie tugged Sam by the elbow and handed him into the eager care of Kristen and Siobhan.

Dean folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the counter as he overheard Siobhan telling Sam they’d need his help bringing in her gear from their truck, and Sam sputtering out a weak  _ o-okay _ . Once the front door had opened and closed behind them, Dean couldn’t hold back the laugh as he spun to face Cas.

“God, you’d think they were gonna dissect him or something. Can you even imagine being that paranoid about getting new clothes?”

Cas frowned and tilted his head before looking down at himself and picking at the soft flannel shirt he was wearing. He finally looked back up at Dean and shrugged.

“Clothes didn’t matter much to me as an angel, but I’d grown accustomed to wearing a suit and coat. It had become something of a uniform for me, and the first time I changed out of it was… difficult. Unsettling.”

“What, you missed the tax accountant look?” Dean teased, as Jamie silently pressed a stack of plastic food containers into his hands and pointed him at the fridge before going back to tidying up the rest of the kitchen.

Cas shook his head. “It had become a constant, almost a part of my identity, in a way. Until I fell and needed to change my clothes, I’d never even considered the possibility of doing so. Suddenly I was faced with the necessity of having to shop for and choose all my clothing.”

Dean made room in the fridge for all the containers, and was relieved that his back was turned to Cas while he recounted his experiences all those years ago. It made him feel even worse that it was his fault Cas had to go through all of that alone, even these things that Dean had never even considered, that were just a mundane part of being human, but would’ve seemed overwhelming to an angel. Jamie silently moved to the other side of the large kitchen, giving them as much space as she could. He couldn’t keep his head stuck in the fridge forever, and it would be cowardly to try. Dean took a deep breath and shut the door, giving Cas his full attention.

“At first I chose things for practical purposes. Things that I didn’t have to pay for being the most practical. When I started working at the Gas N Sip, I could afford to be a little choosier. Comfort became a priority, as did function. Things that were easy to clean, or could be worn multiple times, or were appropriate to wear to work. By the time I began investigating the angel murders, I’d saved up enough to buy a respectable suit, and actually felt good about wearing it again.”

Dean gave him a considering look. “That was a nice suit. Even if you still looked naked without the trench.”

Cas smiled and held his arms out to the sides, taking a step back from the counter so Dean could see all of him, dressed head to toe like a typical hunter from his grey henley under a dark blue flannel, jeans, and the heavy boots Dean had bought him when his old shoes had begun to hurt his feet. “And how about now? Do I still seem  _ naked _ without a coat?”

Dean could feel his face heating up and forced his breathing to stay even. This was  _ not _ the line of questioning he’d intended to open up, but Cas deserved his honest opinion, and Dean owed him at least that much. He shook his head.

“Nah, I’m used to you wearing everything now. Including all the shirts you stole from me.”

Cas snorted. “If I recall, you gave me most of them.”

“Yeah, but not all of ‘em,” Dean replied, taking a step closer as Cas lowered his arms. “You’re happy being human now, right?” Cas nodded, so Dean went on. “Then I’m happy to see you wearing whatever makes you happy, okay?”

They stood there looking at one another for a few moments until the front door crashed open, followed by the loud clatter of suitcases and what sounded like a heavy rolling cart with a squeaky wheel filled the front hall. With the spell broken, Jamie finally reminded them that she’d been there the whole time.

“We’re done in here,” she said. “You two wanna go watch Sam squirm, or would you prefer a quieter activity? Fishing maybe, or canoeing? The water’s not quite warm enough for swimming yet.”

“Nah, if Sammy’s getting his extreme makeover, that’s definitely something we wanna see, right Cas?”

Cas just shrugged. “I’m content to do whatever you’d like.”

“Well, then, let’s get this party started,” Dean replied, clapping Cas on the shoulder and heading back to the living room.

The room had been transformed, now strewn with a chaos of fabrics that rivaled the dressing room at a fashion show. Two rolling clothing racks now flanked the fireplace, and Kristen sat in front of a sewing machine that had been set up on the coffee table while Siobhan dug through one of two heavy trunks filled with even more fabric and sewing equipment. Marie, Tina, and even their new guest Delana looked through the racks, conferring together and casting the occasional assessing look at Sam before continuing their hushed conference. For his part, Sam stood there fidgeting, his hands moving from his pockets to his sides to folded across his chest and then back again as he awaited their judgment and his fate.

Dean hung back, tugging at Cas’s shoulder and leaning in with a smirk on his face. “Looks like we haven’t missed any of the fun, huh?”

Cas tilted his head toward Dean’s, looking over the room and trying to take it all in. “Sam looks highly uncomfortable.”

Dean shrugged and bumped his shoulder against Cas’s. “Eh, it’s good for him. He’s always pretty much been stuck with what he can find on a rack, and at his size, it’s usually slim pickings. It’s kinda nice to see him spoiled for choice for once in his humongous life.”

Dean’s smirk had settled down into a warm smile by the time Cas glanced over at him, and just seeing Dean looking so content was enough to bring a smile to Cas’s face, as well. The two of them made their way into the room, Cas giving Sam what he hoped was a reassuring nod as he followed Dean around to sit by Kristen.

“So, what’s the plan?” Dean asked her as he and Cas squeezed in together on one end of the sofa beside her.

They missed the knowing glance that Tina and Marie exchanged, all their attention focused on the hem Kristen was putting in the cuffs of a pair of really nice navy blue dress slacks. She finished the hem and stood up, holding up the pants in Sam’s direction.

“Okay, go try these on. They should be perfect now,” she said to him, and then sat back down, blowing her short bangs up out of her face and turning to Dean with a grin. “The plan is to get him to take as much Ken Doll treatment as we can dish out. Siobhan’s been working on her final portfolio for months now, using Sam’s measurements from the books.”

“Dude, since when did Chuck start handing out that sort of detail?” Dean asked as Sam skulked off to the bathroom to change. “I didn’t read that in any of the books.”

Every eye in the room turned toward him, a mixture of astonishment and wonder. It was Marie who broke the silence.

“Dean, you’ve read the books?”

“Um,” he replied, shrugging at Cas. “Yeah, all the way through Swan Song, which was a bitch to get through. How the hell is anyone happy with that as the end to the series?”

“Well we’ve read all the unofficial novels,” Jamie replied, bringing a tray with a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of cookies out and setting it opposite Kristen’s sewing machine.

Marie nodded. “It’s obvious they leave out even more details than the original series did, and there’s a hell of a lot Chuck left out entirely, like how Sam got out of Hell, for one thing…” She gave Dean and Cas a significant look, but without any pressure for them to fill in those details for her. “But every once in a while he’ll send out a short story or even just a few pages or a single scene with this sort of detail in it. Sam bought a new suit last year, and Chuck diligently recorded the entire experience for us.”

Siobhan smiled at Sam as he returned from the bathroom wearing his newly hemmed trousers. “Three pages of excruciating details on how big an ordeal it was for him to find a decent suit. It’s what gave me the idea for my senior project.”

Kristen nodded, smiling up at her girlfriend as she spun Sam around and checked the fit of the pants until she was satisfied. “We figured if we ever did get to meet you in real life, it would make a fitting gift.”

Tina snorted as Kristen draped her measuring tape around her shoulders. “ _ Fitting _ . Nice one.”

Kristen shrugged at her with a fond yet defeated look on her face. Dean’s initial horror over the details of their lives being handed out to random people faded as he watched the excitement fill Sam’s eyes as Siobhan handed him the matching blazer to try on. It fit him like a glove, and Dean had to admit he’d never seen his brother look so pleased with a suit before. If Chuck wasn’t sending them anything  _ too  _ personal, and as long as he seemed to have his heart in the right place, then Dean supposed he could be okay with it. At least in this case.

There were certainly details of his own personal life he sure as shit hoped not even Chuck was privy to, but after reading all the books he  _ did _ publish, Dean didn’t really have a lot of hope on that front. He cast a covert glance over at Cas, because of course that’s where his current concern had directed his thoughts. Cas seemed blissfully unaware of Dean’s internal struggle, smiling contently as Sam praised Siobhan’s skills and admired his new suit in the full-length mirror mounted to the end of one of the rolling clothes racks. But of course Cas had never been disturbed by anything in the Winchester Gospels before. To him, it seemed perfectly natural that the world would want to read every detail of their lives. Even  _ Cas _ had read them all, told Chuck he  _ admired his work _ . And all Dean could think of now was some of the work he’d gotten up to in those books.

_ Full. Frontal. _

Dean cleared his throat and reached for a glass of lemonade. After a few sips, he managed to ask what he hoped sounded like an innocent question.

“So, uh, what other sorts of, um, personal details has Chuck sent you guys over the years?”

Jamie leaned forward, turning her attention back from the fashion show and resting her elbows on her knees. “Are you worried we have more surprises for you, G-man?”

It was the most flirtatious thing she’d said to him since they’d arrived, and it knocked Dean a little off balance. He sat back, cradling his glass of lemonade in both hands and trying to pass it off nonchalantly, as if it had been an idle question. He shrugged.

“Not particularly,” he replied after a moment. “Just curious what Chuck’s been saying about me, I guess.”

Jamie sighed, and her face softened into a sympathetic smile as she shook her head. “Nothing bad, I swear. Most of what we get of you guys nowadays is just enough to lead us to the people we can help.”

“We got a warning about a year and a half ago not to trust you on sight,” Tina replied. When Dean frowned and was about to explain what had happened, she held up a hand. “We know about Michael and Lucifer, and what you did to save the world  _ again, _ but Chuck wanted us to be aware of the danger. He told us to stop hunting until further notice, and then sent this when it was safe to start back up again.”

She pulled out her phone and pulled up an email, then passed it to Dean.

“Dean’s Dean again, resume normal activity?” he read out, showing the screen to Cas.

“Sent by CatLover2Y5?” Cas asked, his eyebrows displaying his confusion. “And you’re sure this is from Chuck?”

Jamie snorted. “Yeah, scroll down and read the signature.”

Cas did, in his customary tone of voice. “Hi everybody, it’s me, Chuck.” Cas handed the phone back to Dean. “And there’s a picture of him and Amara reclining in lounge chairs on a beach? Why?”

“Can’t mistake it has a forgery, anyway,” Dean agreed, shaking his head at the picture and handing the phone back to Tina.

“Yeah, he sends them to our whole private mailing list,” Jamie said. “And we’d know if we had a security breach. We’ve got the best tech support.”

Dean cleared his throat, remembering what they’d said about Charlie, and rightly assumed that he still wasn’t supposed to ask. If Charlie didn’t want to be found, if she just wanted to stay safe and off their radar, that was her choice. It hurt knowing she didn’t feel like she could let them know she was alive, but after the year he’d had, he understood why. He really needed to change the subject, and luckily Cas obliged.

“Why is Sam wearing a purple shirt with a dog on it?”

Dean glanced over just in time to see Sam emerge from the hallway wearing a replica of a shirt he hadn’t seen in more than a decade. He wondered what other bits of their past these women were able to dredge up, and what other oddities of their lives had been collected in these trunks, unbeknownst to them. It was a far safer line of conversation, at least he hoped, and let his curiosity carry him away as he set his glass down and reached for the nearest trunk.

“What other golden oldies you got stashed in here?”

Sam went through several dozen outfits over the course of the next few hours. Some needed to be altered slightly to fit, and others he simply didn’t like. He seemed to get choosier as the game went on, once he realized he didn’t have to settle for whatever he could find that fit him, since _everything_ fit him. Of course Dean teased him about it, but Sam was having such a good time he didn’t even care. By the time the sun began to set, Sam had a stack of new clothes packed into brown paper shopping bags and two new suits hanging from the mantle behind him, and everyone in the room had relaxed into a friendly banter.

They talked about everything from various hunting misadventures to the girls’ college experiences. Even Delana opened up and shared her own recent brush with the supernatural once she’d gotten the call from Michelle letting her know that Brian had been discharged from the hospital and was safely on his way to her. Dean gave Jamie a covert approving nod. She’d made all this happen, and not just their impromptu relaxing weekend. She’d taken a horrific experience and made it her life’s mission to make that sort of experience more bearable for anyone whose life had been forever altered by the supernatural.

Kristen and Siobahn eventually packed up the remaining clothes and wheeled everything back out to their van. Siobahn solemnly walked over to Sam and pressed a beautiful chocolate brown denim jacket into his hands. It was thick and quilted, lined with deep green satin with several large, useful pockets concealed inside, and she looked him right in the eyes.

“Please tell me you’ll burn the orange one?”

Sam gaped at her for a minute, but then shrugged. “Is it okay if I donate it to charity instead?”

She stared him down for a few seconds but finally relented. “Sure, fine. Someone can probably make good use of it, but not  _ you _ ,” she finished, poking a finger at him and waiting for him to agree.

He grinned at her, slipping on the beautiful coat before helping her carry one of the trunks out.

“So are you guys sticking around for dinner?” Jamie asked Kristen.

“Nah, we’re meeting the gang up at the roadhouse, and Kendra’s saved us a room. We gotta get on the road early tomorrow.”

Kristen went around the room hugging everyone goodbye. Siobhan and Sam returned to carry out the last crate, until he was bombard with a hug from Kristen.

“Oh, hah,” Sam said, hugging her back. “I really can’t thank you guys enough. If you’re ever passing through Lebanon…”

Siobhan snorted before claiming a hug from Sam as well. “Nobody’s ever just passing through Lebanon.”

“Well, you know where we are, anyway,” Sam said.

“Yeah, that goes for all of you,” Dean agreed. “You ever need anything, you don’t have to wait for Chuck to send you an email.”

“Good to know,” Marie said. “There’s actually a few books you might have in your collection that I’d trade my Streisand wig just to borrow for a day or two.”

Dean narrowed his eyes at her. “What sort of books?”

Marie shrugged, turning pleading eyes on Sam and hoping he’d understand. “Mostly old hunting ledgers. The novel I’m working on is about a group of hunters in the old west, and I wanted to check a few things for accuracy.”

A dozen thoughts flowed through Dean’s mind, from worries that her novel would be filled with inexplicable robots and space travel, his usual concern about publishing anything accurate about monsters or hunting in general, and then finally settled onto the most important detail.

“Wait, you’re writing a western about hunting?”

Marie grinned and nodded. “Set in Wyoming in 1850. And no, there’s no surprise robots.”

“Well if you need a check for accuracy, Sam and I were in Wyoming in 1861.”

“You were _what_?” Tina asked, launching an entirely new conversation.

They ordered pizza and spent the rest of the evening sharing some of their more interesting experiences that Chuck hadn’t felt the need to jot down and email to the entire group. Time travel, alternate universes, purgatory, and most of the previous year included. When they occasionally hit on a subject that everyone had already read about, the flow of conversation reversed as Sam, Dean, and Cas got to sit back and hear the story from an outsider’s perspective. It was entirely unsettling, hearing their own experiences recounted enthusiastically by the entire group, and occasionally eye opening. Especially for Delana who seemed to have forgotten her own trauma entirely, drawn into the stories being bandied about.

“Wait, so you were actually  _ cartoons _ ?” Delana blurted out at one point.

“Not just cartoons,” Dean replied. “We were in Scooby Doo.”

“I don’t understand how that’s more unbelievable than the time travel or the alternate universes,” Cas said.

Delana laughed and shrugged. “I guess I can imagine 1944 or a world with giant troll monsters because I’ve never seen them myself, but I watched Scooby as a kid, you know? It’s just… weird.”

“That’s not the only time they were sucked into the television,” Marie said, leaning forward to set her empty plate on the table and grinning at Delana. “An archangel tossed them into his own personal tv land once.”

“Yeah,” Dean replied, nudging Cas with his elbow and failing to control his face. “Gabriel was kinda obsessed with Sam’s junk. Lost on Nutcracker  _ and _ had to do a Herpexia ad.”

“Well at least I didn’t get shot in the back by Dr. Sexy,” Sam grumbled.

“You take that back,” Dean replied, pointing an accusing finger at Sam. “Dr. Sexy didn’t shoot me, that deranged guy who wanted me to give his wife a face transplant did.”

Sam rolled his eyes and the conversation rolled on.

Throughout the evening, Cas remained comfortably by Dean’s side. Dean found himself relaxing more and more, even given the topics of conversation. Who knew telling tales of Purgatory and the Darkness and the British Men of Letters to a rapt and sympathetic audience could leave him feeling so unburdened? It was like the weirdest group therapy session he’d ever attended. Considering the group therapy sessions he’d attended undercover on hunts hadn't been all that therapeutic, when he made the connection, he laughed out loud in the middle of Sam recounting their meeting with Anubis, drawing every eye in the room.

“Uh, sorry,” he said, shrugging an apology at Sam before turning to Cas. “Just realizing how much I probably needed to talk all this shit out for once. Maybe Dr. Phil’s on to something after all.”

Cas smiled at him, and the two of them just stared at each other for a few moments until Sam cleared his throat.

“Yeah, go on, Sam. Ancient death god and his abacus.” Dean said, waving a hand absently, and conversation resumed again.

Dean let himself lean back into the cushions, his shoulder pressed reassuringly against Cas’s. Sure, it felt good to get all this stuff out of his system, but that didn’t mean the processes was easy. So what if he literally needed to lean on Cas through it all? Hell, that might even have been the biggest relief of all. Not just leaning on Cas, but the realization that Cas was also leaning on him.

It was getting late. The sun had set hours ago, and that was saying something considering it was early June. Beside him, Cas yawned, triggering Dean’s sympathetic yawn. Or maybe he was just as tired as Cas was. He reached over and patted Cas’s knee.

“We haven’t even been out digging graves or chasing monsters, and we’re about to pass out on the couch. Must be getting old,” Dean joked.

“I’m over five billion years old, Dean. I’m entitled,” Cas replied. “I don’t know what your excuse is.”

“Hey, including Hell years, I’m like eighty. That’s pretty damn old for a human.”

“Are you actually joking about Hell?” Sam asked. “Is there something in the water around here?”

Jamie replied with a raised eyebrow, “We don’t call it Healing Waters for nothing.”

The three hunters were suddenly on edge, their eyes trained on Jamie and silently demanding clarification. She looked from Sam, to Dean, to Cas and knew they had taken her joke way too seriously. She held up her hands and her eyes went wide. “Joke! It was a joke! It’s just water!”

As the hunters accepted this and allowed themselves to relax again, Tina piped in with, “The healing comes from everyone feeling accepted and safe enough to open up and talk. Though the lemonade doesn’t hurt.”

“Yeah, especially after you started mixing it up with bourbon,” Dean replied, grinning as he raised his glass and drained the last of his drink. “But we really should crash soon. Unless you got more fun and games penciled in for us tomorrow, we should probably be heading home.”

Sam nodded his agreement and stood up, stretching. “Yeah, we shouldn’t be taking up rooms that some people will need a lot more than we do.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jamie said. “I don’t think anyone deserved a night at the Healing Waters more than you three. I mean, none of us would be here at all if it hadn’t been for you.”

“And it helped, right?” Marie said, leaning forward in her chair and looking each of them in the eye in turn. “You’re glad you came?”

“Damn right,” Dean told her quietly, but with feeling.

She beamed at him and nodded. “Okay then, let’s get you sorted into your rooms.”


	7. Chapter 7

After fetching their bags from the car, Jamie turned out the lights and checked the locks on all the doors. She led the parade up the stairs to a long hallway with two doors on either side labeled Holy Water and Silver on the left, and Salt and Iron on the right.

“Tina and I have rooms on the third floor if you need anything,” Jamie said, pointing to the narrower flight of stairs going up to the attic level of the house. “Sam, why don’t you take Iron here,” she added, opening the first door on the right. “It’s got a queen size bed, which is hopefully big enough for you.”

Sam snorted. “More than big enough, thanks. And, uh, thanks for this,” he said, hefting two of the brown paper bags filled with new clothes he’d brought up with him. “And for everything.”

Jamie nodded and pulled him into a quick, awkward hug he couldn’t return because of his bags. “We’ll have breakfast at nine, if that’s okay with you guys? I figure you deserve a lazy morning for once.”

“Sounds good,” he replied, casting a glance over at Dean and Cas standing awkwardly together a little further down the hall and not really paying much attention. “Night.”

He disappeared into his room and shut the door behind him as Marie and Delana bade them a good night and returned to their respective rooms. That just left Jamie to show Cas and Dean to Salt. The two of them had been leaning close to one another by the door, talking too quietly for her to overhear until she approached. She cleared her throat to get their attention, assuming that whatever they were discussing wasn’t something they’d want her to overhear. From the look on Dean’s face when he noticed her coming, she was pretty sure it had been a fair guess.

“So I already told Sam, breakfast is at nine. Get a decent sleep, and don’t worry about anyone coming knocking before then,” she said, opening the door and reaching into the room to switch on the light. “There’s a bit more space in here, since the two of you take up more room than even Sam does alone.”

“Thanks, Jamie,” Dean said, not really sure how else to respond. The last time he’d said goodbye to her, there’d been flirting and kissing after a long and memorable night. This time, he wasn’t even sure a hug would be appropriate. Luckily, Jamie seemed to get that and she just smiled at the two of them before reaching out and patting both of them on the shoulder.

“I’m really glad you all came to visit,” she said quietly.

Dean nodded, traded a glance with Cas, and then swallowed hard. “Yeah. Yeah, so are we.”

With that, she left them in the hall and disappeared quietly up the stairs. They watched her go and then slipped into their room.

They stood just inside the door as Dean nudged it shut with his foot. The room was simply but tastefully decorated in warm and comfortable tones of tan and burgundy. Dean had fixated on the king size bed with chunky wooden posts carved to resemble pineapples supporting the head and footboards. If he’d been alone, he would’ve figured he’d hit the jackpot and gone diving onto the huge bed like a little kid. But he wasn’t alone, and the prospect of sharing even that huge bed with Cas had his thoughts pinballing around inside his mind. He turned to Cas, only to find him looking admiringly at everything in the room other than the bed.

“So, at least we got plenty of space to spread out. I hope you don’t kick in your sleep,” Dean said, trying to break the tension, or at least to stop the flashing lights and dinging bells in his head.

Cas blinked at him, apparently not even having considered the sleeping arrangements yet, what with having been studying the detail of a floral motif carved around the edge of the dresser on the wall opposite the bed. Or maybe he’d been staring at the small television atop the dresser and wondering if there was anything good and distracting they could watch instead of getting all weird about having to share the bed.

“I don’t believe I kick in my sleep, but I wouldn’t know for sure,” Cas eventually replied, sounding uncertain and concerned that he might channel Jet Li in his dreams. “I suppose there’s only one way to find out,” he added, slowly turning from Dean toward the bed.

Dean heaved a huge sigh and walked over to the foot of the bed. He set his bag down on one of the two little benches there, pulled out his toiletry kit, and headed into the ensuite bathroom. He could pretend this was just like the night before at the motel. There was nothing different about this at all. There was no reason to make it weird. Just because there wouldn’t be a three foot wide chasm of commercial carpeting between him and Cas didn’t really change anything, right?

He flipped on the light in the bathroom and whistled. Well, this was nothing like the little utilitarian motel bathroom. Not that there’d been anything particularly  _ wrong _ at the motel up in town, but this bathroom was anything but utilitarian. The color scheme of the bedroom carried over in the granite countertop flecked with gold and deep red, and gold taps on the sink and in the huge glass cubicle of a shower that would easily fit two. Dean stopped himself from thinking that thought all the way through and went back out to find something to wear to sleep.

He found Cas already laying out his clothes for morning on the bench beside his bag. Jeans, t-shirt, socks and underwear, and a red and blue plaid flannel that he’d clearly pilfered from Dean’s closet.

“Hey, I was wondering where that went,” Dean said, batting at the sleeve of the shirt as Cas tried to fold it. “Haven’t seen it since laundry day, and I was starting to think I lost it on that last hunt.”

Cas shrugged, focusing more intently on his folding. “It felt so soft and comfortable when I removed it from the dryer that I wanted to wear it at least once. To see if it felt as nice to wear.” He finished folding the shirt and held it out to Dean. “If you’d rather I didn’t wear your shirt, you can have it back. I intended to return it after the next laundry day.”

Dean blinked at him while that pinball started up again, coming dangerously close to ricocheting off the table and losing the game for him. Of course he didn’t mind Cas wearing his clothes. Heck, he probably liked it a little too much, which Cas absolutely did not need to know. If Cas wanted to wear it because he liked the way it felt on his skin, Dean could hardly blame him for that, either. There was a reason Dean owned so many soft flannel shirts, after all.

“Nah, you’re fine,” Dean said after a moment, and then cleared his throat. “It’s a comfy shirt. Like wearing a hug.”

Cas smiled tentatively, one side of his mouth rising as he ran a hand over the soft material. “Strangely, that’s how I’d been thinking of it, too.”

Dean’s heart skipped a beat as Cas set the shirt down on his pile of clothes for morning, and set to work digging out the pair of sweats he wore to sleep in. He collected his toiletry bag and excused himself to the bathroom, making sure Dean was okay with him going first. Dean nodded absently, just standing there watching Cas close the door behind him. The second the door clicked shut, he let out the breath he’d been holding far too long in a wheezing rush, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. That damn pinball was gonna give him a migraine at this rate.

He stared down the bed, his back to the bathroom door. It was probably better to glare at the selection of decorative pillows up at the head of the bed than it was to stare at the bathroom door imaging what Cas was doing on the other side. Stripping off his shirt and pants, washing his face and missing a few stray drops of water that would probably run down the side of his neck… and this seriously wasn’t helping anything. Dean kicked off his boots and pulled off his socks. At least he could get a head start and get some of this potentially awkward shit out of the way before Cas came back out. He’d changed into the soft old t-shirt he saved for sleeping in and was just contemplating whether he had enough time to change his pants when the water shut off in the bathroom. To hell with it, he thought. Cas still had to put on his sleepwear. He probably had time. But Dean had probably spent too long glaring at the bed, because he’d just bent over and pushed his jeans down to his feet when the door opened behind him.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Cas said, as Dean let out a manful yipping noise and tried to stand up straight spin around in one less-than-graceful maneuver.

Dean’s feet tangled in his jeans as he twisted, and he landed hard on the little bench with a grunt. He sat there, stunned for a second, realizing this could’ve gone far worse than landing ass-first on the bench. At least he hadn’t faceplanted into it. Without looking up at Cas, he played it off as if he’d meant to pirouette and crash land, reaching down to free his feet. He tossed the jeans on top of his bag and quickly pulled on his sweats as he stood. With a brisk nod to Cas, he sidestepped around him and into the relative safety of the bathroom.

Dean brushed his teeth and hastily splashed cold water on his face, and then stared at himself in the mirror for a minute to make sure his face wasn’t doing anything weird as he ran through a series of mental trial runs of climbing into bed with Cas. Scenario number one had Cas already bundled up under the blankets drifting off to sleep. And while that would’ve likely been the least traumatic possibility, it also probably would’ve been the most disappointing. The second scenario had Cas sitting up in bed trying to figure out how to turn on the tv. Also probably not traumatic, but also moderately disappointing. Several other trial runs led him to similar conclusions.

This series of thoughts left Dean staring at himself in the mirror in horror as a stray water droplet escaped his eyebrow and slid down his nose. If everything he could imagine actually happening left him feeling disappointed, what did he actually  _ want _ to happen?

The pinball went absolutely  _ bonkers _ .

Dean leaned forward over the sink, eyes squeezed shut and his chin tucked down to his chest between his hunched shoulders, his hands braced on the edge of the cold stone counter. This was without question the worst possible time to let himself think such dangerous thoughts. So what if he secretly hoped that Cas was just as nervously waiting for him out in the other room? He knew it couldn’t possibly be true. They’d shared motel rooms numerous times before, and it had never been an issue. Cas had never even hinted that he was uncomfortable sharing space with Dean, and never expressed any interest in taking advantage of their alone time in any of the numerous ways currently plaguing Dean’s mind.

Nope, Dean needed to cut that line of thought before he said or did anything as stupid and reckless as acting on any of those desires, or even mentioning them. He couldn’t do anything that would make Cas uncomfortable, especially under Jamie’s roof. He didn’t even want to think about the mortification of driving Cas to go downstairs to sleep on the sofa just to escape Dean’s untoward advances. Most important of all, he wouldn’t do anything to put his friendship with Cas in jeopardy. Dean could control himself for one damn night.

He took a deep breath, gave himself a stern glare in the mirror, and then turned off the light and opened the door. To his surprise, Cas was still standing at the foot of the bed, his back turned toward the bathroom door much as Dean’s had been when Cas had surprised him a few minutes earlier. At least Cas didn't have his pants tangled around his ankles. Lucky bastard.

Dean froze for a moment, but reminded himself that this was all entirely normal, just like any other night in any random motel room with two proper functioning beds in it. He walked forward until he was shoulder to shoulder with Cas. A glance out the corner of his eye confirmed that Cas was frowning at the massive bed, wringing his hands. Dean turned his attention to the collection of decorative pillows scattered across the headboard, and spoke in a quiet, measured voice without looking back at Cas.

“Something bothering you, Cas?”

Cas dropped his hands to his sides and sighed. “I’ve never slept in such a large bed.”

Dean snorted out a tiny little laugh, still studying the pillows. “Same as sleeping in any other bed, but you’re less likely to roll out of it in the middle of the night.”

“Does that happen to you frequently?” Cas asked, sounding concerned.

Dean shrugged. “Not really, no.”

“Which side am I supposed to sleep on?” Cas asked after another few moments of awkward silence.

“Don’t matter to me. Which side do you usually sleep on?”

“I think I tend to sleep in the middle.”

Dean nodded slowly. He’d spent a significant portion of the previous night watching Cas sleep. He finally gave Cas a nudge around to the left side of the bed, for no other reason than it was closer. “Then we’ll try this,” he said, walking around to the right side. “If it doesn’t work for you, we’ll swap. Sound good?”

Dean felt a little relief that Cas’s concerns were so easily solved, even if his own were infinitely more complicated. It had slowed the pinball down enough that he thought there was a decent chance he might even get a little sleep. He risked a glance up at Cas when he reached his side of the bed, only to see him frowning severely down at the small mountain of pillows obscuring the top edge of the blanket. Dean figured it was easier to set an example rather than try to explain the point of pillows whose only reason for existence was to make it more complicated to get into bed. He grabbed the two closest cushions and dropped them to the floor, revealing the more standard bed pillows meant for sleeping on beneath.

“Just toss them somewhere,” Dean said, pulling the blankets back and crawling under the covers. “Unless you feel like building a nest to sleep in, they’re just gonna get in the way.”

“That doesn’t sound entirely unpleasant,” Cas replied, collecting the frilly pillows on his side and stacking them neatly beside his nightstand while Dean fluffed up his remaining pillows to sit back against the headboard.

“If you wanna see if there’s anything on TV, feel free,” Dean said, as Cas slowly climbed into bed beside him.

There was still a noticeable gap between them, but there wasn’t that final safety net of the unbridgeable expanse of cheap motel carpet separating them. Dean wasn’t too proud to admit inside his own mind that the distraction of the tv might not be as terrible a thing as he’d imagined back in the bathroom. Cas sighed as he settled back against his pillows, and Dean couldn’t help but look over at him.

“I wouldn’t want to disturb anyone else who’s trying to sleep.”

Dean smiled despite himself. “Didn’t seem to bug you at the motel last night.”

Cas shrugged and jostled the bed a bit, and Dean did his best to control his face. They were really doing this, sharing this bed.

“I wasn’t as concerned about waking random strangers at a motel, but this is Jamie’s home and we’re her houseguests.”

“We don’t have to blast it, Cas. Just thought it might be relaxing, or whatever. Help us wind down.”

Cas thought about that for a minute, looking from the blank television screen back to Dean. If Dean wasn’t mistaken, Cas did seem a bit uneasy, if the way he was white knuckling the edge of the blanket was anything to go by. Dean didn’t wait for a response, just reached for the clicker and found something quiet and soothing to serve as background noise. He settled on a nature program featuring the wildlife of some pastoral alpine meadow and turned the volume down until it was barely loud enough for them to hear the narrator’s calming voice.

“Just until we wind down,” Dean assured him as he set the remote down on his nightstand and turned back to Cas, who now looked both puzzled and a little sad. “What’s wrong?”

Cas stared at a brown rabbit hopping across the tv screen before looking down at his hands and uncurling his fingers from the blanket. “It’s nothing, Dean. Just not what I expected.”

Dean was about to reach for the remote again. “What, you’d rather find something else to watch? Be my guest. I just know you love these nature shows.”

“No, this program is fine.”

Cas sat quietly again. Dean waited for him to clarify, but when it was clear that no additional answer was forthcoming, he couldn’t stand the tension any longer. He twisted a bit to face Cas, careful not to shift any closer.

“So how’s this not what you expected, then?”

Cas sighed, looking away for a moment, and then answered. “This is just… stranger than I expected. Sharing a bed with you.” He risked a glance at Dean and then focused back on his hands resting in his lap.

Dean hesitated, not wanting to brush off Cas’s feelings with one of his usual jokes. The bells might’ve quieted down in his head, but that fear of disappointment was still just loud enough to keep him from making it sound like he didn’t care at all.

“Come on, it’s not really any stranger than sharing the room last night, is it?”

Cas looked back at him, opening and closing his mouth before finally replying. “You’re significantly closer now.”

Dean couldn’t stop the side of his mouth from ticking up. “That’s not such a terrible thing. I don’t kick in my sleep, I swear.”

“I know, Dean.”

Dean finally worked up the nerve to reach over and rest his hand on Cas’s shoulder, hoping Cas would find it reassuring. It certainly felt good to Dean, anyway.

“Please, Cas. Tell me what’s bothering you. Maybe we can fix it.”

“I don’t know if there’s anything  _ to _ fix, Dean. I can maintain my composure when I’m awake. Even when we’re sitting shoulder to shoulder on the sofa like we did most of the evening. I’m not sure I can maintain it in my sleep.”

It was Dean’s turn to gawp like a landed fish as Cas looked away again, but he didn’t let go of Cas’s shoulder. Hesitantly, he asked, “What do you mean? Composure?”

“I’m afraid I’ll do something... unseemly in my sleep.”

Dean almost laughed at that, but instead just squeezed Cas’s shoulder as his heart began to pound in time with the pinball. He swallowed and nodded slowly, trying to pick his way through the potential minefield Cas had presented him. Hope twinged inside him between flashes of terror and the fear of all his previously imagined disappointments. The pinball wasn’t helping at all.

“Can’t fault you for what you do when you’re unconscious, Cas.”

Cas frowned even deeper. “You said some things earlier that may have made it more difficult for me to maintain the carefully constructed barriers I’ve erected regarding you.”

Dean’s breath hitched in his throat. He could imagine the barriers clearly, with their blinking warning lights and caution tape. He had some pretty similar barriers of his own, after all. His only fear now was that Cas’s barriers were holding something completely different in check. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and waited for the pinball to land just right to crack through the ricketiest of his defenses, and then turned to Cas.

“Yeah, I know what that’s like. After you came back a couple years ago, we got one day to enjoy it before things went to hell again, and we had to head in different directions. It sucked, but at least you were alive, even if you couldn’t stick around back then. But now,” Dean said, reaching out and laying a hand on Cas’s arm. “Now you stayed. You chose to stay, and I think I’ve just been waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something else to make you need to leave again. It was easier to let things stay how they always were. Hell if I was gonna let spilling my dumbass feelings be that other shoe.”

Cas nodded slowly, looking from Dean’s hand on his forearm up into Dean’s sincere expression. “How exactly do you need me, Dean?”

“You were kinda on the right track with the whole food, water, and air thing,” Dean replied softly.

Cas studied him for a moment, and then looked down at their hands. He moved his free hand to rest on top of Dean’s, brushing his thumb across Dean’s knuckles and sending a shiver down Dean’s spine.

“Yes, but what do you want from me in return?”

Dean watched Cas’s fingers move across his skin for a minute and then looked up into his eyes. “This is a pretty good start.”

“It’s not unseemly?” Cas asked, relief flooding through his eyes.

“Not nearly unseemly enough, really,” Dean replied.

Cas’s eyes went wide and for a moment Dean worried that he’d crossed a line. Before Cas could react, Dean stumbled on through the wreckage of that barrier and hoped he didn’t fall face first into one of those land mines, fighting to hold Cas’s gaze.

“But, uh… that’s… I mean, it don’t make a difference if that’s not how you need me, too.” He finally scooted a little closer to Cas, still leaving a few inches between them. “What do you want from me, Cas?”

Cas studied his face, his thumb continuing its slow path around Dean’s knuckles. The pinball slowed to match the pace of Cas’s touch and Dean felt himself relaxing into a state of quiet hopefulness.

“Everything, Dean,” Cas said.

Dean nodded slowly as the pinball finally rolled off the edge of the table and everything went quiet for a split second while he worked up his nerve. “Okay, then. While we’re on the same page here, I’m gonna kiss you now.”

Rather than answering, Cas leaned over and closed the small distance between them. Dean recognized it as the permission it was and met him halfway. Their lips touched, softly at first, cautiously for all the effort it took to get them there. Cas made a content little noise deep in his throat and Dean couldn’t hold himself back anymore. He reached around Cas and pulled him close, holding on for dear life as Cas clung on to him. They only parted when they’d run out of air, Dean leaving a trail of kisses across Cas’s jaw.

“Is this unseemly enough for you yet?” Cas asked as he regained his breath.

Dean froze with his lips pressed to the bolt of Cas’s jaw, his progress toward Cas’s neck halted mid-kiss. He pulled back far enough to look into Cas’s eyes, panting, but managing to keep most of the worry off his face, he hoped.

“If you don’t want this, we can stop,” Dean said, even as the thought dredged up that looming disappointment.

“I don’t want to stop, Dean. I thought we were just getting started. I said I wanted everything from you, and I meant it.”

Dean watched him for a moment. “And this ain’t stranger than just sharing a bed to sleep?”

Cas smiled ever so slightly, his cheeks tinged pink as he glanced down at Dean’s kiss-reddened lips and then back into his eyes. “After the day we’ve had-- after the last few weeks, really-- it felt stranger to share a bed with you and not hold you through the night, to lie a careful foot away from you and pretend I didn’t want to.”

Dean darted in for a quick kiss before moving back, laughing low when Cas chased after his mouth. “In that case, nothing we do from here on out is gonna be unseemly at all, Cas.”

Cas considered that, and then quickly tugged off his shirt, tossing it off the foot of the bed. “Is that a challenge?”

Dean gaped at him for a second, trying to reconcile this flirtatious behavior with  _ Cas _ , and then giving up entirely. “Maybe there is something in the water here,” he muttered, whipping off his own shirt and tossing it after Cas’s. “Don’t think I even care.”

He pulled Cas back into his arms, warm skin on skin more than making up for the loss of any fabric to cling to. Cas gasped as Dean ran a hand down his back, and Dean shivered as their lips met again. He wouldn’t push, letting Cas set their pace, despite his dick expressing a hopeful interest in the current proceedings. Cas wrapped him in his arms, content for a few minutes to explore Dean’s back and shoulders with his hands, before suddenly grunting and pulling Dean down on top of him. Dean let out a strangled noise of his own and blinked down at Cas as he caught his breath again.

“You weren’t kidding about wanting to hold me, huh?”

Cas looked back up at him, his eyes drowningly wide, “Is that a problem?”

“Not at all a problem,” Dean confirmed, shifting his weight so he was lying fully atop Cas, making it clear just how happy he was to be there, and then biting his lip around a groan of pleasure as his erection slid into place beside Cas’s.

Cas sucked in a breath and arched his back, grinding their hips together and bringing an answering gasp from Dean. “Good. I wasn’t entirely sure I was doing this correctly.”

“Trust me,” Dean replied, giving a slow roll of his hips that left Cas clawing at his back. “You’re doing everything correctly.”

When he recovered enough to move of his own free will, Cas reached down and pushed at the waistband of his pants, lifting his hips and grinding against Dean again in his haste to remove the last of their clothing. Dean made a pained noise at the loss of contact, but lifted up enough for Cas to kick off his pants before shoving Dean’s down as well. Dean didn’t even bother taking them all the way off, letting them settle around his knees before dropping back down on top of Cas with a groan of relief and diving in for a hungry kiss.

Years of pent up tension burst free, driving them into a slightly awed frenzy of hands and mouths. Cas’s hands ventured lower, latching onto Dean’s ass and urging the roll of his hips and the delicious friction between them to an ever quicker pace. Dean tried to reach down between them, lifting his hips just a fraction of an inch to get a hand around both of their cocks, but Cas was already shaking with need and too close to the edge to back down. He threw a leg around the back of Dean’s thighs, locking him in place. They would have time for slow and gentle exploration later. This moment was made of pure need.

Cas whispered his name, but for all the desperate longing it conveyed to Dean, he might as well have shouted. Dean looked into his eyes as that moment of pure understanding passed between them, and then Cas’s eyes rolled back into his head as he came with another gasp of  _ Dean _ . Dean’s next thrust was eased by the slick warmth, and he curled in, burying his face against Cas’s neck as he came with Cas’s name on his lips.

He lay there, breathing in the warm scent of Cas, luxuriating in the feel of Cas’s hands now playing gently across his back and shoulders, and savoring the contented rumble deep in Cas’s chest as he hummed out a satisfied groan. Dean eventually had to move though, and Cas made his displeasure known by clenching his arms tight around him as he shifted his weight.

“We gotta clean up, Cas,” Dean said, without any real conviction. “We’re gonna glue ourselves together if we don’t.”

Cas drew in a deep breath and hummed it out with a dissatisfied grumble. “How is that a bad thing?”

Dean snorted and lifted his head enough to give Cas a slow, reverent kiss. “It’s itchy and uncomfortable and not sexy at all. Trust me.”

“I trust you completely, Dean, but I also don’t want to move.”

Dean shivered as a bolt of heat shot down his spine at Cas’s words. Cas trusted him completely, even lying there laid totally bare and completely undone. Reality shifted around them and locked this moment into place for all time as dean blinked down into Cas’s contented gaze. He took a moment to embed it firmly in his mind and then slowly reached up to run his thumb across Cas’s cheek. Cas leaned into his touch, smiling sleepily up at him, but he could already feel a twinge in his back and the drying mess between them was becoming sticky.

“I don’t wanna move either, Cas. We can shower in the morning, but you gotta let me take care of this.”

“Fine,” Cas replied, releasing the tension in his arms so Dean could slide off of him.

Dean rolled over enough to reach down and tug his pants the rest of the way off, laughing at himself as he did. He used the soft flannel to clean Cas and himself, and then tossed them off the edge of the bed.

“Now you don’t have a pair of pajama pants to sleep in,” Cas commented.

Dean shrugged as he reached over and turned off the light, then picked up the remote so he could turn off the television. The little brown rabbit from before had found a mate, and they were now going at it like bunnies. He pointed them out to Cas, who sat up just enough to see the screen and smile before flopping back down onto the pillow.

“Good for them. But rabbits don’t wear pajamas.”

Dean switched off the tv and settled down at Cas’s side, pulling the blankets up over them.

“Not like we’re wearing them now,” Dean replied, pressing his naked self up against Cas as a reminder. “Not like I’m gonna need ‘em tonight, and we’ll probably be back home tomorrow.”

“Are you gonna need them tomorrow?” Cas asked, peering at him in the dark with one heavy-lidded eye.

“Depends on whether you’re gonna volunteer to keep me warm all night again,” Dean teased as he drifted closer to sleep.

“Always,” Cas replied, just before his breaths evened out.

Dean let that thought carry him off to dreamland.


	8. Chapter 8

Dean awoke the next morning to Cas still snuggled up to him. Cas had really held him all night long. Cas’s hand ran slowly up Dean’s side from his hip, and then back down again, and Dean made a sleepy, happy little sound as he planted a soft kiss in Cas’s hair, the only part of him he could reach without moving from their comfortable little nest.

“Mornin’, Cas,” Dean said, and then cleared the sleep from his throat.

“Hello, Dean,” Cas replied. “Did you sleep well?”

Dean tightened his arms around Cas in a little hug and then stretched his back without letting go. “Best sleep I’ve had in forever. You?”

“Same.”

Neither of them moved for a few minutes, Cas’s hand still busy exploring Dean’s side. Cas eventually shifted to smile up at Dean, arching his back to give him a gentle good morning kiss. One kiss became a long, lazy series of kisses.

“We should probably get up,” Dean said eventually. “Get showered and dressed before someone comes knocking to drag us down to breakfast.”

Cas leaned up enough to see the clock on Dean’s nightstand. “We still have an hour.”

“Yeah,” Dean replied, a mischievous smile spreading across his face. “But did you see that shower?”

They still managed to make it downstairs-- clean, packed and ready to get back on the road-- five minutes before anyone would’ve come looking for them. Dean considered the entire experience a win. From the look on his face, Cas did, too.

Before they ran across anyone else in the house, they dropped their bags off in the trunk of the Impala. They’d already decided this had been the most successful hunt they’d been on in ages, and they were both looking forward to getting home to recover for a few days. For once, that didn’t mean nursing injuries or sleeping off a string of sleepless nights. If Sam wasn’t done enjoying his spa experience, then he could find his own way home when he was done playing dress up, or whatever else Jamie and Marie had planned for him. Dean and Cas were looking forward to a few days of quiet to revel in their new relationship status in the quiet comfort of their own room, and everything else could damn well wait until they were done. Well, everything but breakfast.

The aroma of cinnamon and coffee and the sound of quiet laughter drew them to the kitchen. Neither Dean nor Cas had been prepared for the sight that greeted them. From the looks of the kitchen, everyone else in the house had been up early, baking up a storm. The countertops were covered with trays of freshly baked cinnamon rolls, chocolate chip cookies, assorted croissants and cooling cupcakes.

Sam sat at a raised bar along one side of the center island sipping his coffee and eating a cinnamon bun, doing his best to stay out of the way of the baking frenzy that had erupted around the rest of the kitchen. Jamie, Marie, Tina, and most surprisingly, Delana, were all laughing at their current project. Delana coached Tina through the process of piping pink frosting roses onto the cupcakes, bringing a chorus of encouragement and giggles at her attempts.

“Whoa, someone has a sweet tooth,” Dean said as he and Cas stood in the doorway, wondering whether it was safe to enter the kitchen.

Sam glanced up at them and snorted. “Yeah, it started with the cinnamon rolls, and then we learned Delana’s a professional baker. Things kinda snowballed from there.”

Dean’s mouth dropped open. “So how come there’s no pie yet?”

Delena glanced up at Dean and then grinned at Sam. “You were right.”

Sam just shrugged. “He loves his pie.”

“Well, Dean, not everything can be about you,” Marie said, teasing him good-naturedly. “This is about Brian, who’s due to show up here in a few hours. Delana’s making him some of his favorite desserts to enjoy while he recovers.”

Delana nodded. “He wasn’t up to the long ride back last night, so they stopped at a motel, and they’re taking it slow today. I thought it might make him feel better, more like home.”

“That’s understandable,” Cas replied. “I’ve always found comfort in simple pleasures in difficult times.”

“And that’s the truth,” Tina said, holding up her finished cupcake with a slightly lopsided icing rose. Instead of setting it down with the others, she peeled off the paper wrapper and took a bite of it, humming with pleasure while enjoying her own imperfect creation. “It’s kinda ugly, but it tastes fantastic. Like strawberries and champagne.”

Delana beamed at her. “Those are Brian’s favorite cupcakes. I make them on Sundays and he says it’s better than going out for one of those overpriced champagne brunches.”

“Grab some coffee and take your pick of the breakfast buffet, I guess,” Jamie said, pointing to the coffee pot and sweeping her hand across the counter. “I was gonna make French toast when Delana caught me finishing up a pan of cinnamon rolls and we kind of rearranged the whole plan.”

“Sometimes life does that to you,” Dean said with a sad little smile as he poured coffee for himself and Cas. “But, uh… sometimes the new plan turns out even better than the original. Hell, I don’t even know what to try first.”

“It’s okay, we have time,” Cas replied, patting Dean on the shoulder. “You can try everything.”

Dean handed him his coffee with a grin and almost leaned in for a kiss before remembering they weren’t alone. Not that he was trying to hide the fact that he and Cas were… whatever they were now. Dean’s mind supplied the suggestion of  _ married _ , in Sam’s most exasperated tone of voice, but it’s not like he’d even had a chance to figure it out with Cas yet. It seemed presumptuous to just assume Cas would be fine with the touchy feely stuff in public.

He’d apparently stood there frowning long enough for Cas to begin to worry about him, though. Cas leaned in close and whispered conspiratorially, “Why don’t you just start with a cupcake and then work your way down the counter?”

Dean blinked out of his reverie and smiled at Cas, replying equally quietly, “This is why I love you.”

It was Cas’s turn to blink. “I love you too, Dean.”

They didn’t even notice that the kitchen had gone quiet around them until Sam set down his coffee mug with a clatter, sloshing coffee onto the counter.

“Shit, sorry,” Sam said, hastily mopping up spilled coffee as Dean and Cas slowly turned to see everyone else staring at them.

Delana gave them a soft smile, but Tina, Marie, and Jamie blinked, staring open-mouthed at them before turning their stunned gazes on each other. It was Marie that finally broke their silence.

“It’s canon. Oh my Chuck, it’s actually canon.”

“What?” Dean asked, afraid he knew exactly what she meant.

“I mean we all kinda assumed when you shared a room, but we didn’t really  _ know _ ,” Marie said. “Congrats on figuring yourselves out, I guess? What do you even say at a time like this?” She looked around to Tina and Jamie, who shrugged but looked equally stunned and pleased, before turning to Sam.

“Don’t look at me,” Sam said. “I’m always the last to know.”

“Wait, you didn’t know about this before?” Jamie asked, waving a spatula at Dean and Cas.

“Well, I mean, I have eyes, but like… I had no idea they’d actually done anything about it.”

“Can everyone stop talking about us like we’re not standing right here?” Dean said. “It’s not like we’ve been hiding anything from anyone. There wasn’t even anything to hide until last night.”

“And we didn’t intend to hide it this morning, either,” Cas added, frowning at Dean.

“Well I hadn’t meant to make a big production out of it, either,” Dean replied, trying to convey his apology to Cas for making this all way more awkward than he ever intended.

Cas replied with a warm smile, reaching up to pat Dean affectionately on the cheek.

“Aww!” Tina said, and then clamped a hand over her mouth before giving Marie a significant look and then going back to diligently frosting her cupcakes.

“It’s just like in the fanfic,” Marie said, shaking her head and getting back to work clearing away the mess they’d made while baking.

“I think it’s sweet,” Jamie added. “And yeah, congrats to both of you. You deserve a little happiness, too.”

“Yeah, they do,” Sam said, looking a little queasy. “But you guys don’t have to ride all the way home with them like this.”

“Neither do you, bitch,” Dean said, picking up a cupcake.

“You know, you’re right, jerk.” Sam finished off his cup of coffee and set his mug down again, giving him just enough time to change the subject. “So what was the plan for today, anyway?”

Unfortunately for Sam, nobody else in the room was ready to change the subject yet.

“Well, if you’re worried about contracting diabetes from second-hand sweetness exposure,” Tina said, “you’re welcome to stick around here for a day or two. Maybe you can catch a ride home from one of the hunters who swings through here on the regular.”

Sam gave Dean a defiant look. “Yeah, I think I might do that. I think at least one of us should take the time to see the community you guys are building here, anyway.”

Dean nodded slowly, then turned to Cas with an expectantly raised eyebrow. “I think we can at least stick around long enough to get the fifty cent tour of the town. Maybe get some lunch at that roadhouse before we set out for home.”

“That sounds agreeable,” Cas replied, leaning over and selecting two cupcakes and handing one to Dean. He held his up as if it were a glass of champagne and declared a toast. “To the most satisfying hunt that’s ever been fabricated and orchestrated on our behalf.”

“Hear hear,” Dean replied, bumping his cupcake against Cas’s and then shoving it in his mouth. “Oh wow, that’s good,” he added around a mouthful of cake.

“Gross, Dean,” Sam said, rubbing a hand over his face so he wouldn’t have to watch. “Swallow, then talk.”

“I can do both,” Dean replied.

“Yeah, okay,” Sam said, standing up and hastily gathering an assortment of baked goods into a plastic container and then shoving it into Cas’s hands. He spoke to Cas, ignoring Dean as much as possible, considering the two of them were joined at the hip. “Take this for the road. Take him home and hopefully we’ll all have recovered from this nightmare by the time I come home. Just remember, Mom and Jack will be home in a few days. We don’t need to traumatize them, too, do we, Dean?” Sam turned his glare on his brother and waited for an answer.

Dean shrugged, draping one arm around Cas’s shoulders. Cas held on to the treats and gave Sam a solemn look.

“We’ll do our best, Sam.”

Marie muttered under her breath, “So does this make me the greatest fanfic author of all time? I think it might.”

“It’s not really fanfic if it’s all canon,” Tina suggested.

Sam stood there, suddenly torn. “So wait, if I go home with you guys,” he said, pointing at Dean and Cas, “I’ll be subjected to at least six hours of unavoidable third wheeling all the way back to the bunker.”

Dean made a face that strongly suggested Sam get to the point already. Sam rolled his eyes and turned his back on Dean.

“But if I stay here, I’ll be subjected to an ongoing debate about Dean and Cas and their  _ whatever this is _ ?” he added, waving a hand over his shoulder in their direction.

Marie gave him a sheepish shrug.

Sam made a pained little noise and turned to Jamie. “Would it be possible, when you have a chance, to get a ride into town so I can rent a car, or steal a car, or get on a bus or a bicycle or a fucking moped and drive off into the mountains for a few days and maybe find a cave to hide in?”

Dean made a disgusted sound. “Thanks for being so encouraging, Sam.”

“I can’t express in words how happy I am for the two of you,” Sam said. “I just don’t think I’m prepared to be immersed in it, in Chuck-written levels of detail.”

Dean thought about that for just a split second, and imagined what that might entail if he were in Sam’s position. He recoiled, and then began piling additional treats into Cas’s plastic container.

“Yeah, okay, Sam. I get it. We’ll behave on the ride home, until we’re safely locked in my room.” He turned to Jamie. “We can’t thank you enough, but, uh, we’re gonna be unsubscribing from the Chuck email blast list. You know where to find us if you need us.”

He took Cas by the hand and dragged him out of the kitchen, before turning back and calling out to Sam.

“You comin’, or what?”

Sam grabbed one more cinnamon bun, hastily expressed his thanks and yelled after Dean and Cas. “Wait up, I gotta grab my bags.”

He bolted up the stairs, collected his new wardrobe, and was stuffing it and himself into the back seat of the Impala as Dean revved the engine.

“That was close,” Dean said, grinning over at Cas as they headed down the winding driveway to the road. “Bad enough Chuck’s playing voyeur on all of us.”

“I’ve already sent him a series of adamant prayers that he never discuss our personal lives in his missives to the Healing Waters mailing list,” Cas muttered under his breath.

Dean reached over and patted his knee. “Yeah, same.”

Sam sat in the back seat with the tub of sweets, shuddering at the thought.

Meanwhile, on a faraway beach, Chuck and Amara sat together, sharing a toast of their own over a couple of mimosas. “To a job well done,” Chuck said.

Amara raised her glass. “Well worth whatever you spent on Marie’s education. You secured her publishing contract, right?”

Chuck shrugged. “She’s a better writer than I ever was. Flying Wiccan Press was happy to sign her on.”

Amara laughed with wicked delight. “I can only imagine how Sam, Dean, and Cas are going to react to their new fictional lives.”

Chuck just shrugged. “At least this time it’ll be pure fiction. They won’t have to live through it themselves. But honestly, they’d probably have preferred Marie’s version to the bugs. I still can’t believe I wrote that one.”

He shook his head as Amara cooed at him and refilled his glass.

“It’s out of our hands now, and they finally got their happily ever after. That’s all that really matters in the end, isn’t it?”

Chuck gazed out over the ocean and then turned back to his sister with a smile. “We made this beautiful thing, and now we get to sit back and watch it unfold on its own. There’s really no more satisfying ending than infinite new beginnings.”

“Still, I wonder what they’ll do next?”

Chuck shrugged. “They’ll keep doing what they’ve always done. Save people, hunt things, carry on taking care of each other and the world. They’ll keep doing their best. Only now the entire universe isn’t conspiring against them.”

Amara studied him for a moment and then nodded. “I agree. That’s an incredibly satisfying ending.”

They sat back in their lounge chairs, sipping their drinks, watching the tide roll in and keeping one eye on their favorite creations as they sped home toward Lebanon.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this story. If you did, I've written a lot of other stories you might enjoy. I'm also on the tumbls as [mittensmorgul](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com).
> 
> Here, have a direct link to [the tumblr post for this fic](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/183883311135/rating-m-words-30k-tags-crack-treated).


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